


Lost in a Life

by akelios



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blow Jobs, Character Death, Drugged Sex, Intercrural Sex, Light Bondage, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Control, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Orgasm Denial, Slavery, Torture, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2011-07-11
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:23:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akelios/pseuds/akelios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The punishment for wizards who use magic to kill humans or other wizards is not death, but eternal slavery. After Harry kills Justin the Council binds his magic and his free-will with an unbreakable collar and sells him as a slave.</p><p>John Marcone is rising fast into power in Chicago underground. He has just found out about the supernatural and wants to be prepared against it, too. He has the money and the connections, and he's in search of a wizard who will be loyal to him. What better way to assure loyalty than having a slave bound to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forestgreen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestgreen/gifts).



> This was written for the Dresden Files Kinkmeme what feels like a million years ago. I'm a lazy ass who just got around to kind of cleaning it up and posting it here. Blame Skin Game for reminding me.
> 
> Unbetad, since this fic is how I met the always splendid forestgreen, and roughly cleaned up for spelling, etc. 
> 
> I think that I've warned for everything, but if you spot a warning I've missed, please let me know and I will add it.
> 
> Also, this Marcone is the kind of Marcone that other Marcone's would kill. He is a bad man.

-1-

It had been hours but I could still taste the smoke in my mouth, hear Elaine's short, high pitched scream and Justin's angry shouts. I could see the twisting shape of him, trapped in the house as it burned. He'd danced, twitched as the flames took him, the heat twisting muscle and bone into grotesque shapes.

It was all I could see, and it was all in my mind. The black hood over my face prevented anything else. There were voices speaking all around me in some language I couldn't understand. An argument, from the tone. And then there were the hands, grabbing at my arms where they were bound behind my back, pressing me further forward until I was bent in half, my knees and forehead touching the cold ground beneath me. 

I squirmed, kicked, shouted and tried to fight back with my magic when all else failed. A decisive word was spoken and the build up of power around me was sliced away, falling useless around me. The hood was pulled off of me and I blinked tears in the sudden, blinding light. Hands pressed down on my shoulders, one on the back of my head, pushing my hair up off the back of my neck. Something cold and metallic pressed into the back of my neck, a burning, tingling sensation spread from the thing and I felt the zing of magic as it wrapped around my throat, tightening. 

My breath came out in a high whine and a work rough hand descended on the back of my neck, covering it and the thing. A soft phrase and the burning feeling went away, replaced by the comfortable warmth of that hand. I felt the fight and the fear flow out of me. I sagged, my body relaxed, waiting.

The lights were lowered until I could see without pain and a short, rugged man knelt in front of me. I raised my eyes to his, staring into them for a second before looking down. I couldn't- I didn't want to see his soul. It was too much. I felt too raw, under this strange calm that had pressed down into my soul.

“How do you feel, Hoss?” His voice was good, nice. I leaned toward him, though I couldn't tell why.

“G-good.” A shiver trickled through me. I only had on a pair of worn, torn jeans and wherever we were was chilly. “Please-” The thought slipped away. I couldn't remember what I'd been about to say. It felt like it might have been important, but if I couldn't remember it, how important could it have been?

“It's okay, Hoss. I'll take care of you now. My name's Ebenezar, but you can call me Eb. Got that?”

“Yes sir. Eb.” I nodded, a nice, warm feeling stealing through me.

~

_Three Years Later_

“We should've ridden up with the wizard.” Nathan peered at the map, as though that would make the directions we'd been given make any more sense than they had five minutes ago.

“I had no desire to spend any length of time with that man. He's obnoxious. How hard can it be to find a fuckin' farm, anyway?” 

Nathan tore his gaze from the map to glare at me.

“Said like a man raised in a city all his life. Look, just ask for directions, Johnny.”

“I don't need-”

Nathan opened the door while the car was still rolling and stepped out. We were crawling along, but still. He stepped out of a moving vehicle. And I was the impulsive one. I pulled into a parking space just a little further down, wishing that my brakes weren't in such good condition so they would make an angry screeching sound as I did.

Nathan was hunched over a mailbox, the map spread out on it. A tall, thin young man was bent over it with him, dark hair a shaggy counterpoint to Nathan's own bright red spikes. His jeans and t-shirt combined with an unbuttoned light coat to give him a very...farm-boy look. It was a bit ruined by the practical hiking boots rather than cowboy boots, but I found that that little detail didn't take away from the image. I frowned at Nate's back. He'd chosen the boy on purpose. There were half a dozen other people on the street, and he chose the one that he knew would appeal to me. Trying to appease my irritation, maybe. He had that habit. Piss me off and then throw me a shiny treat. It wasn't going to work this time, or ever again. I wasn't that street punk anymore. That was the whole point of this damned exercise.

“-see where you got turned around. It's kind of hard to find any more. There used to be a half collapsed out-house at the end of the lane, but the last storm took it out.” The young man's voice was soft; amused, but sure of himself. “I can show you how to get there, if you can give me a ride. My car's in the shop. Again.” As I walked up one of the passers by chuckled at that. The boy gave them a half-hearted glare. It had the feeling of a routine, familiar and friendly to everyone involved.

“What do you think, John?”

I looked at the boy. No one had known that we were coming out here except for the wizard who had been our contact and brokered the purchase. He had no stake in 'mortal' affairs and wouldn't get paid until I had taken delivery and was safely back to my home with my new acquisition.

“I think that's a good idea. Thanks for the offer...”

“Harry.” He held out his hand. He had long, clever looking fingers. The boy, Harry, was deeply tanned, long, wiry muscle obvious in his arms. We shook, and I tried to catch his gaze. He kept glancing away, his eyes never where I thought they would be for very long. All I managed to get was the impression of dark, rich brown color and less openness than his manner so far would suggest.

“I'm John, and this is Nate. I appreciate you going out of your way like this, Harry.” He shrugged and the three of us headed for the car.

“You're actually doing me a favor. I live up on Inis Croft with Eb. My car's down for maybe a week this time. I was going to have to walk all the way back.”

“You couldn't have called this...Eb?” Harry nodded and climbed into the back seat. He had to fold himself up to fit. Neither Nate nor myself were short men and there wasn't a whole lot of leg room back there. Harry had a lot of leg. I tore my gaze back to the windshield, waiting for everyone to get their seat belts on. “To come give you a ride?”

“No phones. We're kind of old fashioned. I've walked before, it wouldn't have killed me. But a ride is much better.” He grinned and it made him look years younger.

We made small talk, inconsequential facts passing back and forth interspersed with Harry's directions as the landmarks came up. Maybe ten minutes outside of town we took the right where there used to be a broken down out-house, though what one of those was doing so far from civilization was a mystery to all involved, and started up the winding drive.

“What've you guys got to do with Eb anyway? He didn't mention having any visitors this morning.”

“He may not have known this morning, since you guys don't have a phone.” I met Harry's eyes in the rear view for a brief second. Deep, gleaming brown, nearly black in the shade. “An acquaintance of ours has arranged for us to purchase some livestock from him.” Until I knew how much Harry knew about the wizards and their punishments for those who broke their laws, I thought it best to keep my mouth shut.

“Huh.” Harry sat back in the seat and I could feel his frown. “None of the lambs are ready to leave their mothers yet and we don't keep enough stock on hand to really just start selling them off. I wonder what- There. Take that track there. It leads to the house. The other road leads to the barns.” I took the track, little more than two rutted lines where the grass refused to grow.

The house, when we pulled in to its clearing, was a well built, large log cabin. Two vehicles were already parked off to the side, on old blue Ford truck and Warden Morgan's nondescript Chevy. Harry noticed the Chevy and the air in the car went tense.

“Crap. Morgan.” He made the name sound like a curse, and from what I knew of the man I had to agree with the sentiment. The worst kind of fanatic – one with a badge. Harry sighed. “Park over with the trucks. If Morgan's here...Eb might not be in the best of moods. He and Morgan don't get along.”

I parked and Harry jumped out. He ran his hands through his hair and pulled the jacket off, holding it over one arm. Light pierced through the heavy foliage to glint off of the necklace I hadn't noticed he was wearing before. I caught up with him, his long strides forcing me to move faster than dignity would suggest and got a good look at his jewelry.

And stopped dead in my tracks.

It wasn't a necklace, it was a _collar_. The same odd black metal, intricately etched and knotted so that it was beautiful, that I had seen around Warden Morgan's slaves throat, only without the matching 'master' piece.

Harry wasn't an apprentice, or a farm hand. He was the warlock. He was _my_ warlock. The knowledge shocked me. And it caused something deep within me to stretch lazily, to smile with long, razor teeth. Pleased. Mine.

In the midst of this verging on disturbing bit of self reflection, the front door to the cabin slammed open and a cross, short man stomped out. He was followed closely by Morgan, who looked a bit ruffled.

“Sir, I-”

“Get in the house, Harry.” Harry froze, the tone of Ebenezar McCoy's voice clearly not something he was accustomed to. After that seconds hesitation, the collar seemed to writhe on his throat a little, and he jerked into action, starting for the house.

“No.” Morgan stepped into his path and brought out the circlet that would complete Harry's collar. My portion. It was a dull, tarnished looking gold, but no less beautiful for it. Matching etchings and marks to the black collar circled it, seeming to shift and writhe if you looked at it for too long. Harry's collar stopped moving against his skin and he stopped, his eyes wide and confused. “You should have told him before this, McCoy.”

“God damn it Morgan! They weren't supposed to _sell_ him! The Merlin, that yellow bellied son of a whore promised!” I watched Harry's lips form the word 'sell', realization dawning in his eyes.

“The Merlin, your _leader_ swore that he wouldn't sell Harry right away. Not until you'd had time to train him properly. You've had three years. You reported that he had completed his studies. Was that a lie?” I saw the thought cross McCoy's features. Morgan saw it too. “It is time. You've grown too attached to the warlock.” Nathan stood beside me, tense. He didn't like this. He hadn't liked the idea of owning another person in the first place. Now that he'd been friendly with my slave, he liked it even less.

“Mr. Marcone? If you would?” I gave Nate a look that said to stay back and keep an eye on the old man, then crossed the distance between myself and Morgan. “This is Harry, the warlock we discussed. Would you like to examine him before we make the purchase final?” I glanced at Harry, taking in his pale skin beneath the tan and the fine tremor that had begun. Morgan's grip on the master collar was tight and I suspected that Harry could not have moved far enough to collapse without Morgan's permission. Such power. And Harry himself. I could have him. The thought was secondary, next to the advantage he would give me over the others vying for power in Chicago. But even the faint images it produced in the split second I let myself consider it made me want to smile.

“No. I believe that I've seen what I need to. So long as his talents are as strong as promised?”

“Of course. Harry, a demonstration. Something impressive, but not destructive.” Harry shook, faintly, but turned to face the other side of the clearing. He raised his right hand and made a smooth, practiced gesture, whispering something that sounded faintly like Latin. A whirlwind appeared in the middle of the clearing, lighting crackling along inside of it. The wind pulled at us, strong enough to count as a miniature cyclone, leaves and other debris skidding along the ground until they were sucked up into the growing funnel. Harry made another gesture, whispered again and the wind vanished as though it had never been. “Excellent. Are you satisfied?”

“Very much so. I'm certain I won't be disappointed.” Harry met my eyes, again for only a split second before looking away. There was something there, hurt, which was to be expected. After all, I'd been friendly with him, even as I referred to him as 'livestock'. Of course, neither of us had known it was _him_ I was referring to at the time.

“Good. If you would come take the collar?” I took the gold piece from Morgan. It was hot and throbbed with a beat, something that slowly shifted to match my own heartbeat as I stood there. Morgan took out a small, short bladed knife and laid it against the side of my hand, between thumb and forefinger. I didn't flinch when he cut me, the blood flowing over the metal in my hands, and Nate stayed in his position. I'd made sure that we knew what to expect from this ceremony so they couldn't slip anything extra in on us. Morgan spoke the words of the rite, something Germanic in his spell tongue and I could feel power like a pressure growing, pressing in around us.

Harry stood, his eyes on the ground as the spell reached a peak and Morgan guided my hands to place the gold collar around his throat, touching the black one. As I released my grip, my blood smearing against his cheek, the collars moved with alien, liquid grace. The black, which had looked like one solid piece separated, twined around the gold until they were braided together and re-merged so that there was no beginning, no end.

A new awareness lit into being inside of me. I could feel Harry in a faint way. Feel his anger, his shame and his confusion. He didn't understand what was going on, not entirely. McCoy had never taught him that this was to be his fate. He'd thought that he was going to live on the farm forever. And for it to be me, this man that he had found so fascinating-

The impressions cut off. I opened my eyes, though I didn't recall closing them, to find Harry biting his lip hard enough that it was bleeding a little and glaring at my chin. He'd shielded his emotions from me. Not completely. I could still feel him, that was part of the spell, part of the bond we now shared. But I wasn't getting such detail any longer.

“Hoss-” McCoy stomped over, reaching for Harry's shoulder. I didn't want him to touch Harry and as the thought flicked through me, Harry moved, dodging the touch he couldn't have seen coming. McCoy's eyes widened and then narrowed at me. Harry made a small, despairing sound and swallowed hard.

“I have some things. In my room. May I go collect them?” Morgan made a sound. “Please. Master.”

“Of course. Do you need any help packing?”

“No master.” Harry turned on his heel and nearly ran into the house. He was out in less than half an hour, a suitcase under one arm and dragging a steamer trunk behind him. McCoy had cussed at Morgan the entire time, until we heard Harry's return. Then he'd vanished into the woods around us. I doubted he'd gone far, but he was no longer in sight.

Harry looked around, looked for McCoy. When he saw that the man was gone he stopped and it was clear that he had to pull himself back together, to straighten up and walk the rest of the way over to our car was a heavy chore. He climbed into the backseat without another word and curled up, his long legs nearly up to his chest. I could hear Nate's teeth grinding together, but he grunted a dismissal at Morgan and got into the driver's seat himself. I guess I wasn't driving back. Probably for the best – I found myself nearly unable to look away from Harry's dim form at the moment.

“It's a side effect of the new bond.” I gave Morgan a dispassionate look. “The urge to look at him. To touch him and see him all the time. It will fade in a few days. The payment?”

“Will be made in full as soon as I can return home.” I turned my back on him and climbed into the passenger seat. Nathan pulled out, leaving Morgan and the farm behind. My eyes kept finding Harry in the mirror. He never looked up, or out the windows.


	2. Chapter 2

-2-

“What are you doing?”

“I'm pulling off the road. If you want to be specific, Johnny, I'm pulling into a fucking Applebee's so we can get some dinner.”

“We're only three hours out of Chicago. I think-” Nathan shot into a parking space before a minivan could take it and slammed the car into park. He jerked the keys out and dropped them into his pocket. His face was closed, set in hard, stormy lines.

“No. We're stopping for the night.” Nathan got out of the car and slammed the door on my protest. I turned to say something to Harry, but Nate already had the back door open and was leaning in. Harry muttered something at him and slid out of the back seat, stretching once he was on the sidewalk. The urge to watch him had abated, somewhat, but with or without the new bond, I would have watched that.

The easy, fluid movements of youth on a well built young man, all slender strength. His shirt rode up as he flexed his arms above his head, affording me a brief look at the soft dip of his spine before it vanished beneath the worn fabric of his jeans. I tore my eyes away and got out of the car myself. Neither the time nor the place.

Harry jumped a little as I let the car door shut, glancing over his shoulder at me. His face, which had been at least a little animated while he spoke to Nate shut down and he closed in on himself once more. I hadn't been able to get two words out of him the entire three hour ride. Nate had managed to get monosyllables, enough to understand when Harry needed a pit stop.

We walked into the restaurant, with Harry trying to stay closer to Nathan than to myself. I pressed closer, pining him between the two of us. Nathan gave me a look, but held his peace. The theme continued as we tried to arrange ourselves in the booth. In the end, I resorted to ordering Nathan to sit on one side as I slid in beside Harry. He fiddled with the menu and tried to keep as much space between us as possible.

“What would you like, Harry?”

“'m not hungry.” He began to shred his napkin and people in the next booth over could have heard the growl his stomach echoed with. When the waitress came, I ordered for myself and Harry. He said nothing, and I didn't push. A public place was not ideal for an argument, even one I was predestined to win. The food came and Harry stared down at the plate, the scent of the hamburger making even my mouth water.

“I said I wasn't hungry.” He shoved the plate away. I pulled it back and took hold of his wrist before he could do it again.

“Eat the food, Harry. All of it.” Harry pushed at the plate with his other hand and the collar moved, that same writhing it had done before, when he'd hesitated to obey McCoy. He hissed and pulled the plate back to him, scooping up a fry and shoving it into his mouth in self defense. Nathan kicked me under the table. I ignored him and focused on enjoying my steak. The boy had to eat. It was for his own good.

Nate had really meant 'stopping for the night'. He'd convinced me to get a hotel room by the simple expedience of refusing to relinquish the car keys and threatening to leave me in the restaurant parking lot. I'd spent nights, and days, on the street before, but it hadn't been pleasant and I was determined to never do it again.

So the three of us found ourselves in a small, fairly clean hotel room an hour later. Harry shuffled in behind me, dragging his bag over to one corner and dropping it. He looked tired, in the way you get when you've been on the road too long, had one too many surprises. It wasn't a physical exhaustion so much as it was one of the mind.

“Harry, you go get a shower before you fall over.” Nate closed the door and locked it, setting even the small security bar. We had no reason to expect trouble, but that was always when trouble struck, wasn't it? “Just don't use up all the hot water.” Harry bobbed his head in Nate's direction in a half-hearted nod and knelt to rummage through his bag. He came up with a small baggy full of toiletries and a folded pair of pajama pants.

We waited until the door clicked shut and the shower started up.

“You were right to stop. I'm sorry.” I dropped down onto one of the twin beds, grateful for it's minor comfort.

“Damn right I'm right. And I'm right about this, too. Go easy of the kid, John. All this ordering him to fucking eat, or take a shit-”

“I never-”

“You know what I mean! Christ. The kid's just lost his _home_. You know that old man didn't treat him like a slave. You could see that. Hell, I really don't think the kid knew what was coming. He goes from having something like a life to having you, a total damned stranger being able to make him do anything at any time. Show some fucking humanity, alright?”

“And let him start thinking that this is something it's not? That's not fair either. McCoy should have been honest with him. I'm not going to have Harry thinking that he can chose what orders he obeys and which ones he doesn't feel like doing. He's a-”

“So help me God, John, you say ' _tool_ ' and I will knock you on your ass.” Since that was, in fact, what I had been about to say and since I knew Nate could and would knock me flat I said nothing. “I know nothings changed. I know that. We need him, and- just, try being a little more nice. It doesn't have to be all orders and nothing else, does it?” I sighed and shrugged. It wouldn't kill me to try, and it would keep Nate happy.

A knock on the door brought us both to our feet. Nathan got it while I stayed just out of line of sight, my hand resting casually on the butt of my gun. It was just someone delivering the cot we'd requested. By the time the man had rolled it in and left, wishing us a good night, Harry had finished his shower. He slipped back into the room silently, a thin old t-shirt and the pajama pants I'd noticed earlier sticking to his still damp skin. I grabbed my own small overnight bag and started to step around him.

Some half formed fragment of thought slipped past his shields as I drew even with him. He was thinking about running. He didn't know what would happen, that the collar would react, as soon as I realized that he was gone without my permission. Urge him to return, and if he managed to ignore that, stop him from moving by taking him down with extreme pain. I growled and shook my head.

“Harry. You are not allowed to leave this room without either myself or Nathan.” He cussed, a soft angry snarl, and ducked his head. “It's-” I glanced at Nate and he just shook his head, turning to look out the window before drawing the heavy drapes shut, giving us privacy. I moved on into the bathroom, leaving Harry standing there, waiting for me to vanish from his life. There wasn't anything to be said, after all. 'It's for the best', 'It's for your own good'. Both true. Neither particularly helpful, or comforting.

I showered quickly, trying to sort everything that had happened into something like sense. In spite of some minor bumps, it had gone well. My goal had been met with limited resistance. The collar was working as it was meant to. There was, as Warden Morgan had said, a small learning curve. I still felt that I needed to give the orders verbally. That was not the case, as I had seen in the clearing back at McCoy's farm. ' _Your will will be his will, once the collar is completed. You think of something that you want him to do, or not to do, and he obeys. Most people have a problem with that, at first. Realizing that they don't have to tell the slave what to do. Once you've thought it, and meant it, they know it. If you're not totally committed to the action, they can try and resist. The young ones do that at first, but the collar breaks them of it soon enough._ ' Yes. I'd seen that. Harry had resisted the order to go inside, and my desire for him to eat, at first. He'd given in soon enough. And he hadn't resisted Morgan's order at all.

Nate was sitting up in his bed, the one closest to the door when I came out. Harry was on the cot, bundled up in the blankets until all I could see was the top of his head. He didn't move as the light from the bathroom played over him. He wasn't asleep, but he was pretending to be. I slid between the sheets of my own bed and sat watching him until Nate finished his own shower. With the lights finally out, I rolled onto my side and went to sleep.

I woke to darkness, unsure of what had knocked me out of sleep. It hadn't been a noise, nothing so substantial as that. I lay there, still, waiting. Nothing happened, nothing changed. Nate, a few feet away, continued to breathe the deep, even breaths of deep sleep. Whatever it was, it had not disturbed him. Finally, I sat up, taking a slow look around in the gloom. Harry was gone. His bag was still there in the corner by the head of the cot, the blankets kicked to the edge and spilling over to the floor. The door remained locked and bolted, the heavy chair Nate had dragged in front of it still jammed beneath the handle. More than that, my sense of him hadn't faded or changed. The bathroom, then.

I lay back down and waited, listening. Ten minutes later, he had not emerged and I could hear no noises, no water running. My feet were silent against the rough carpet as I swung my legs out of bed and moved to the thin door. Still nothing could be heard. Fine.

The door opened on silent hinges. The bathroom was small, as are all its ilk and brightly lit. Harry was not in evidence crouched on the sink, or the toilet, which left the shower itself, the opaque curtain pulled shut.

“Harry?”

A faint sound answered me, something indefinable. Cloth against flesh, the squeak of a heel on the plastic of the tub. I pulled the plastic curtain back with a rattle of metal.

Harry was curled up in the corner of the tub, the same pose he'd used in the back of the car, knees near his ears, his long arms wrapped around his legs. His face though was not the empty, shocked mask he'd worn before he'd gained control of himself. He was pale, quite nearly the faint green of sickness, his eyes ever so slightly swollen and red.

He stared at me for a moment, as though I didn't quite register on his senses. Then he blinked, grimaced, and scrubbed at his face with the heel of one hand, the gesture oddly endearing. It reminded me of his age. Nineteen, but sheltered from the reality of his life. At nineteen, I'd been killing men already.

“I'm sorry. If I woke you up.” His voice was a combination of sleep and sorrow rough. I sat on the closed lid of the toilet.

“You didn't. Is there something-” Not 'wrong'. From his point of view, everything was wrong. It was a stupid question. “Are you hurt?” A faint blush rose up his throat, his cheeks. I spent a second wondering if he would jerk away if I followed that creeping flush up his face with my fingers.

“No.” He shook his head, his eyes falling to his knees. “I-” He hesitated, trying to come up with some lie. I wanted him to tell me the truth, in spite of the obvious embarrassment it was causing him. “I had a nightmare.” It spilled from him in a rush, information he would rather have kept to himself. He bit his lip and glared at my shoulder. “I used to have them, when I was a kid. I thought I was over them. But it's nothing. They'll go away again.” I wanted to know what he had seen, in his nightmares. Some wizards had the gift of- “It was-” Harry yelped, a strange strangled sound and slapped his hands over his mouth, stopping the next flow of words. He pressed hard and I saw the collar start to move, to force him to obey the order I hadn't really meant to give.

“No. Don't tell me. I don't want to know.” There were things that I would force him to do. That was inevitable. But Nathan was right, in his own way. I didn't need to make Harry hate me. Not over this in any case. I reached for him, took him by the wrist again, as though the contact would reinforce this command over the other. The collar stopped moving and Harry gasped, the strength going out of him in a rush of air. He flopped in that small space and looked at me, gratitude warring with anger and humiliation in his face. I stayed there, crouched beside the tub, holding on to him until he pulled his arm gently out of my grip.

“Harry. You don't _have_ to tell me, but if you would like to, you can. About your dreams.”

He shook his head slowly and rose, towering over me.

“No. I'm not...they're just nightmares. Old stuff kicked up by...” He waved a hand around. “I'll be fine.”

I pushed myself to my feet. He was still taller than I was, but he didn't hold himself like a large man. I would be willing to bet that Harry had always been skinny but that he hadn't always been tall for his age. His mind hadn't quite caught up to the changes in his body just yet.

“Why the bathroom?”

He gave me a side long look and then shrugged one shoulder.

“When I was little, hiding in small places made me feel safe.” He grinned, laughing at himself a little. “I guess I outgrew all the safe places.”

Breakfast the next morning was a drive through meal from the Burger King closest to the Interstate. Harry, who was back to not quite speaking to me, wolfed down two of the sandwiches, playing with the little paper crown that they'd included in the bag as he did. Nathan seemed to think that something had changed, that we'd resolved some issue and was much happier. Or maybe it was just that this was the home stretch. In a few hours we would be back in Chicago, back to the blood and the wars. Back home.

As Chicago, as _my city_ drew closer, it was as though I could feel her. A living presence calling to me. I started putting on the pieces of my persona, pieces of the 'Gentleman' that I had left behind. I thought I could sense Nate doing the same thing. Changing from my long time friend into the bullheaded enforcer/bodyguard that he was known in the city as. Hiding away the quick, clever mind so that no one would see it. He was far more valuable if he was perceived to be 'dumb muscle', which was a sad commentary on society. We valued brawn over brains.

Harry seemed to sense a change too. He flattened the crown out and slipped it into a pocket on his bag, leaning forward between the seats.

“Are we there yet?” He asked Nate, his head turned to exclude me. I pushed at his shoulder, removing him back to the rear seat.

“Another ten minutes.”

Harry jerked his head to look at me. The change in my voice, my accent disappearing clearly startling him. Nate grunted and said nothing. I could see that Harry wanted to ask, but to do so would have been to admit that he was curious. That he cared, even in the slightest, about something I might have to say. So he sat back and said nothing.

Chicago came into sight a few minutes later. The late morning sun setting her ablaze, a dire reminder of how many times she had burned in truth. Harry slid over to one side of the car and stared. I smiled, a little. If he'd been any younger his face would have been plastered to the glass.

“What city is that?”

“Chicago. This is my home. And yours now, too.” I turned in my seat to look at him. Harry didn't seem to notice. Chicago was calling to him. 

It was another half an hour before we pulled up to the gates of my new home. I'd bought the mansion and the surrounding property at auction after the previous owner had vanished one evening. It had been gaudy, layers of silver and gold, heavy artwork in every nook and cranny. A monument to the fact that wealth did not equal taste. As it stood now, it was an echoing, empty shell.

Harry stared, the very picture of the country cousin come to see the city cousin, shocked at the sheer waste of space the house represented. I spoke quietly to Lucinda as he stood there, asking her to make up the bedroom closest to my own. The room that I had had prepared was little more than a cell – cot bolted to the floor, no other furniture, windows barred on both the inside and the outside. And a door that locked from the outside. That wasn't what I wanted now.

She took charge of the men carrying in Harry's things, directing them upstairs and I walked over to Harry, sliding my arm around his waist. He jumped, but didn't pull away. After all, I wanted him right there.

“Let's get a look at the rest of the house.” Harry looked like he'd rather just follow his trunk and bag up to his room, but his head bobbed in that same quick gesture of assent and when I began to move, he followed.


	3. Chapter 3

-3-

The first order of business, for Harry, was the defense of the house and its grounds. It took him two weeks to set them up properly. Nate and I had business that took us from the house for most of the time, so I left Harry under the authority of Wallace, who had been with me nearly as long as Nate. His reports were always favorable – Harry was working hard at getting the wards up and running. 

Every so often the schedule would allow for me to be at home during the day. I would watch Harry work from the second floor or sometimes the patio. Places where he couldn't see me. It felt intrusive, as if everything else that I had done to him wasn't. But this was different. I knew that he wouldn't want me to see him, his concentration focused on the magic, manipulating the forces of nature, of life. It should have been boring. There weren't any flashing lights, except for the one time he accidentally set a dead tree on fire, nothing to keep the attention. But it was beautiful, somehow.

His routine never varied, so that I could know, no matter where I was, what he would be doing at that moment. Harry wove magic into defensive, warning forms in the morning, working until it got too hot, his t-shirts nearly transparent with sweat. He wore cut-off jean shorts and sneakers as he rooted around on the grounds, ending up streaked with dirt and cobwebs. Scraped and bruised from his efforts.

Lucinda would emerge from the house around noon, a platter full of enough food to feed ten boys ready for him. She would scold him until he agreed that it was enough. Harry always chugged a bottle of water, because he invariably forgot to drink the water she sent out with him in the mornings, and then kicked off his sneakers, jumping into the pool to cool himself off. After that he would finally eat and then go inside to change. The afternoons were spent working on small defenses inside the house or research and experimentation for work outside the next day.

I interrupted once, without meaning to. Harry spotted me on the second floor balcony, watching him. He'd been about to jump into the pool, all pleased exhaustion and anticipation. It rushed out of him as he met my gaze. Harry snatched up his sneakers and vanished into the house, showering in one of the downstairs bathrooms and eating his lunch in the kitchen. I was careful to never be seen again.

At the end of the two weeks, we had a test run of the defenses at half-strength. It was a brilliant success, even Harry was unable to keep the simple pleasure of a job well done off of his face. As we watched from an upstairs window as the wards shocked or knocked my men about I caught Harry's hand in my own. He'd been fidgeting, wriggling his fingers around and swinging his arm. I held him still in that small way and ran my thumb over the back of his hand, feeling the smooth ridges of bone beneath the skin.

“Very good, Harry. Beautiful.” He looked at me, a faint tinge of pink surfacing beneath his tan.

The next day, Nathan cornered me at breakfast.

“I'm taking Harry shopping.” I 'mmm'd around a mouthful of biscuit and raised my eyebrows in question. “He's only got jeans and t-shirts. Some jackets. If he's going to start going out with us, he needs some better clothes.”

“Of course.” I should have thought of that. Now that Harry had finished the defenses, I had planned on taking him out to some meetings. Ease him into that side of things slowly.

“And I want to get him some other stuff. Books. Maybe a game or something.” I gave Nate a negligent shrug. Nate rolled his eyes at me and vanished through the door.

It was another week before I decided to take Harry with us. The meeting was supposed to be a simple, peaceful one. Negotiations for permission to operate in Chicago. The only thing left was for the gang to agree to my rules and the percentage they would pay me. A milk run.

It's _always_ when you're not expecting trouble that it finds you.

There was a split second of warning, when one of the men moved the wrong way. Some instinct triggered and I knew that they were going to attack even before they drew their weapons. By the time they opened fire, Harry had stepped in front of me and raised his left hand. A bracelet that I had never seen before flashed briefly in the poor light, runes on the small medallions glowing bright, electric blue. The air in front of us shimmered, a clear, faintly blue concave shield formed in front of us, covering our entire group.

Bullets hit it in an angry, buzzing swarm, brilliant explosions spattering the shield as the bullets ricocheted back at the treacherous drug runners. They weren't very professional – as soon as the bullets started flying back at them, half their number broke and ran. Of the six who remained, only two escaped their own barrage. The others all fell victim to their own weapons. When their magazines ran dry, the two who were still standing turned to flee.

Harry dropped the shield and made a quick gesture with his right hand, another bracelet gleaming at that wrist. I couldn't hear what he said, my ears were still ringing, but the fleeing men went flying through the air, struck by a force that couldn't be seen. They groaned and lay where they'd fallen, twitching. The entire thing had taken half a minute, perhaps less.

My men moved, securing the fallen, separating the wounded from the dead. Harry was looking around, his eyes too wide, his teeth still bared in a manic grin. He was shaking. Adrenaline. Fear. He was gorgeous. He turned to me, stepped close enough to touch my shoulder, to run his hand down my arm.

“Are you hurt?” His eyes flicked over me, panic in his features.

“I'm fine, Harry. You protected us. It was very well done.” I reached up to rub my thumb against the back of his neck. Franklin stepped up to us.

“We've got two dead. The other four are all secure.”

“Take care of them.” He turned and started relaying orders. These men would all be faint memories within a few hours. “Let's go, Harry.”

We climbed into the back of the car and Nate slid into the drivers seat. I met his eyes for a second before I powered up the privacy divider. Harry was pressed against the far side of the car from me, his shaking slowing, but still obvious. As the car began to move I eased across the space until I was close enough to touch.

I started to make the movement, to wrap my arm over his shoulders and draw him those last few inches, but I didn't have to. Harry jerked, a helpless sort of convulsion and closed the space himself, one long leg draping over mine, tangling us together. He whined as I pulled him down, crushing our mouths together. His lips parted in a gasp for air and I took it for an invitation.

There was no fight, only tiny, confused movements, his hands coming up to my wrists, fingers playing against the soft skin there, hips wriggling against mine. I tightened my grip on his head, traced the peaks and valleys of his teeth with my tongue. I thought I could taste the magic, an earthy, electric pulse at the back of his throat. I tried to swallow it, take it into myself.

I pried the fingers of one hand out of his hair and let it fall to his lap, cupping him through the slacks, the bright new underwear. He was soft. So delicate. Vulnerable. I stroked the back of my hand over him, the vaguest whisper of a touch. His hips stuttered, short little hops between the leather seat and my hand. I took hold of him, firm enough to still any further movement. He groaned, nearly breathless and I stroked him, felt him begin to grow hard for me.

He was almost there, tiny sounds escaping him on every breath, my own erection becoming insistent, when Nate rapped on the divider. We were home. I pulled away from Harry, looking at him. His breath was rapid, skin flushed. He looked like he'd been making out in the back of a car. I smiled and laughed, delighted. Harry closed his eyes, groaning. He started to reach for himself, an automatic movement. I didn't want that. 

His hand stopped, hovering just above the bulge in his slacks. Harry's eyes flew open and he looked at me, desperate. I shook my head 'no'. His eyes darkened, shut down. When the car crunched to a stop he leapt out, hurrying away.

He didn't come down for dinner and refused to open the door to let Lucinda bring in a tray. I sent her home, telling her that Harry hadn't been feeling well. Nate was occupied with the clean up and the reprisals that needed to come down on the leader of the treacherous gang. I worked on a little bit of paperwork, my mind elsewhere. Harry.

Up in his room, still hard. Wanting to touch himself, to ease the tension, the need for release. Unable to do so. Desperate. For me. What would he do? Try to rub off against the bed, a pillow, humping it with muffled, embarrassed noises? No. It didn't feel right. The shower.

Not his, but the one in my room. Stripped down, kneeling on the tile, warm water sliding over him, his hands braced against the wall as he made those short, abortive movements with his hips. It would be enough to keep him on edge, but not enough to bring him off, I was sure. After an hour I heard Nate go to his own bed. I shut off the lights in my office and made my way upstairs. 

My bedroom door was open slightly. I closed it behind me, the click of the lock sliding home sounding too loud in the silence. Final. Steam was curling out the door that led to my bathroom. I stripped, throwing my clothes over a chair in one corner.

He wasn't exactly like I'd pictured him. 

Harry's hair hung in his eyes, his skin gleaming, flushed from the heat. He was backed into the corner of the stall, wedged between the small bench set in the wall and the back of the shower. His head was thrown back, the lines of his throat begging to be touched, for my teeth to scrape over the faint stubble there, closing gently over the bulge of his Adam's apple.

He was hard, slick and ready to burst. His fingers rested on his thighs, dancing over the skin, moving up, towards the focus of his being and then jerking away. Unable to touch and needing to more than anything else. Harry's eyes flew open as I stepped in. He bit his lip, his head jerking back and forth, an animal looking for a way out.

I crouched beside him, our thighs pressed together and reached for him. His breath left him in a sob, his entire body arching up, into the touch, trying to fuck the air, my hand, anything. I moved with him, never letting him get more friction than what I wanted to give him. I took my time, learning the feel of him. I suppose it felt cruel, like a tease to him. He begged under his breath, his eyes wild, hands slapping at the tile, gripping my shoulder until I knew he would leave bruises. When he couldn't form words any longer, when all that came from him was a high, continuous moaning whine, I sped up, gripping his slick balls with my other hand, massaging them in counterpoint to the movement of my hand on his dick. He lay there and took it, except for the uncoordinated arching of his back. I leaned in, speaking quietly into his ear.

“Come.” He did, silently, his hips pumping, coating his stomach and legs. I caught some of it, cupping my hand around it as though it were the last drop of water on earth. When his body finally slumped I sat back, tugging at him until he slid, boneless and half conscious, to lay fully on the floor. The water continued to drum gently down on us as I positioned him, wrapped my hand around my own throbbing cock and slicked myself with Harry's come. 

He made that same whining sound as I slipped between his thighs, my knees pressing in slightly, just enough so that the muscled expanses gripped me with something like the right amount of force. His eyes opened, dark crescents beneath the paper thin skin of his lids as I thrust down, forward, sliding over the sensitive skin, the soft sac beneath. I watched him watch me fuck him, the water mixing with the sound of my own heart, my own breath, an endless loop as lightning built at the base of my spine, giving me no warning before it shot through me, spilled out of me to coat his trembling muscles.

I kissed him again, gentle, hardly a brush of lips. He lifted his head, gave the contact some pressure, a hint of heat.

“Wonderful.” I murmured it against his lips and he shuddered, his eyes dropping closed again.

Harry was like a living doll, passive as I got him to his knees. I washed his hair, the feeling of his scalp beneath my fingers soothing, my eye drawn again and again to the pale line of neck beneath the collar that was revealed as his head drooped forward. He rose when I touched his elbow, letting me move him this way and that as I cleaned him, soothed the dirt and sweat away, the sticky evidence between his thighs.

I cleaned him carefully, my hands gentle, thickly coated with the soap. One limb at a time, down, then up, paying attention to each finger, to the jut of his hip, the sharp round of his ankle, the long, fine bones of his feet. He tensed a little, when I pressed my fingers into the arch of his foot. I did it again, scraping my short nails there. The muscles in his leg jumped, dragging a small sound from him. I rose and moved behind him, pouring more soap into my palm.

I slicked the fingers of one hand and spread him with the other, just enough to slide one finger between his cheeks, to brush over the entrance there, tiny and pink. He gasped, but made no other response as I did it again, rubbing the pad of my finger over the delicate crinkle, slicking up his entrance before I pressed in, slowly working my finger past the muscle. I didn't get far. In spite of his lassitude he clenched. I twisted my finger, worked him a tiny bit open before I pulled out, letting the water wash my hand clean.

I took far less time with my own ablutions. Harry sat where I'd told him to, his head leaned back on the wall, careless of everything going on around him.

Clean, I shut the water off and toweled Harry dry, running the soft towel over him with care, lingering over the vulnerable limpness of him. He started to come around, tried to take the towel from me. I swatted his hand away and finished, then dried myself off.

“Bed, Harry.” He sighed and we moved into the bedroom. I turned off the few remaining lights, some of them seemed to have burned out while we were in the shower and climbed in after Harry. He was curled on one side, beneath the sheets. I slid up behind him, ran my hand down his side and over his hip, cupping the silken smoothness of him, perfectly limp and fascinating for it.

I rolled the feeling of him, small and vulnerable like that, in my palm until I knew that I would never forget it. When I had made it a part of me I released him, lay back down, my arm tight around his waist. We fell asleep that way, clean and exhausted. Fulfilled.

Nate using his key to my room and storming in the next morning woke me. He was angry. It rolled off of him in tidal waves. He jerked the curtains open, letting the brilliant sunlight stab at us. Harry tried to burrow under the pillows, but Nathan slamming the door made him jump, his hair standing on end, his body tense. Fight or flight, only there was no one to fight and no where to go.

“Can I help you?”

“I come up this morning to check on Harry and find he's gone. Now, the alarm hasn't sounded, so I assume he's somewhere on the grounds. I look all over the fucking place until there's only one room left. God dammit John! Do you-” He growled, his hands forming into fists. “Harry, you can go to your room. Get dressed. I'll be there in a minute.”

I laid my hand on Harry's thigh, beneath the covers. He didn't move.

“Harry can stay right here, Nate.”

“You really wanna have this conversation with him looking at you?”

“Yes. I think I do. I didn't start this, Nate. Harry did.” His face said clearly that he didn't believe a word of that shit. “Go on, ask him. I won't say a word.” I pinched my lips shut and leaned against the headboard, waiting.

“Harry, is that true?” Yes. He touched me first. Leaned into me in the car, the heat of his leg nearly in my lap. 

“Y-yes.” He whispered it to the sheets, his hands knotted in them. “I- in the car. I wanted him to kiss me. So I-” Harry shook, finally looking up to meet Nate's gaze. “I'm sorry.” Nate searched his face and then seemed to deflate, anger leaving him.

“No. Don't apologise. It's okay. If you... _want_ him, it's okay.” Nate looked at me, frowning. I met his eyes, unflinching. Beneath the sheet, I cupped Harry again, ghosting my palm over the enticing softness. Mine.


	4. Chapter 4

-4-

Nathan came to see me two days later. He hadn't been avoiding me of course. That was impossible for someone whose primary pursuit was keeping me alive. But he had been distant, our relationship not quite right.

“Where's Harry?” Nate scanned my office, searching. The thought that he might find Harry in here was laughable. When given a choice, Harry chose to be away from other people. It wasn't a healthy outlook, but I'd decided to indulge him, for the moment.

“Last I saw him he was in that room down in the basement he's claimed. Making a stink bomb, as far as I can tell.” It was actually meant to be a potion that heightened senses for a short time. There was a great deal of trial and error in potion making apparently.

“Good.” He shut the door and leaned against it, gathering his thoughts. “I need you to swear John, swear to me that Harry made the first move. That you didn't force him.” I set my pen down and leaned back.

“We got in the car and he was shaking. It's one thing to kill, it's another to be in the middle of a firefight. I slid across the seats to try and comfort him and Harry...” I raised my hands in a gesture meant to convey helplessness. “He grabbed me, practically tried to climb into my lap. I kissed him first, I admit that. Maybe I shouldn't have, but I wanted to. He wanted me to. Then I get up to my room and find him naked in my shower.”

“Christ.” He dropped into one of the chairs beside my desk. “He's a kid, John. A kid who literally _cannot_ tell you no. Even if you didn't...make him do anything, you get that you control his life, right? Everything he has he gets from you. Food, shelter. The way he's treated is dependent on his position with you.”

“He's not a _child_ Nathan. He is an adult.” Young, yes. Naïve in surprising ways, given his history. But not innocent. Not harmless. Dangerous, if left unguided, uncontrolled. 

“And that makes no difference. He can't- you can't be sure that he's not just offering himself to you because he thinks that's what you want. So he can make his position more secure. It's an understandable thought, John. He's scared and you have all the power.”

“You think I should have pushed him away?”

“Yeah.” His look said that this should have been obvious, even to me.

“You might be right. But think of it this way – if I had pushed him away, rejected him, how would he have seen that? Might it have frightened him more, to have what little control he believes he has won stolen from him?” I rubbed my hand along my jawline. “It's too late to undo this, Nate. All I can say is that I have no intention of hurting Harry.”

“It's bad enough you went through this whole fucking nightmare, buying someone. Using him like that. But this- there's no way this ends well, John. You know that, right?” Nate closed his eyes, slumping. “It's not right. It's not. Of all the shit we've done...”

“This is just more of the same. Harry represents power. Security. If it wasn't Harry, it would be some other warlock.”

“And would you be fucking them, too?” I managed to hide the roil of disgust that thought hit me with. The other warlocks I'd seen had been rabid creatures, broken to the wills of their masters, but still wild beasts beneath that. Harry, somehow, was not like them.

“If we both chose, yes. Nathan. What would make you happy, here? I don't know what you want me to do.”

“Give Harry some space. Don't make anything that could be mistaken for the first move. For an invitation. If Harry comes to you on his own, there's nothing I can do about it. I don't like it, but I'm not going to make him feel like what he wants is wrong. And if you're not going to turn him down,” I shook my head. No, I wouldn't be sending Harry away when he came to me. “Then I'll have to fucking live with it. But- Jesus. Just, remember how one sided the power structure is here.”

“I can do that.” As though I had ever forgotten. He smiled. It was strained, but he made the effort.

I kept my word. It was a month before I touched Harry again.

The time wasn't spent idly by any means. There were the usual squabbles to be put down, old guard members of the Chicago underworld who did not want to get on board with the future. In counterpoint to these, there was a small but discernible influx of criminals wanting to sign up. These were those who had seen or heard of some of Harry's efforts on my behalf. The saying goes that criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot. Cowardly, perhaps. Only in the same measure that any human is cowardly. But superstitious, oh yes. Many of them were. And I had the wizard.

They came to me, signing on and swearing their loyalty to me. Their eyes always went to Harry, to the gleam of his bracelets, the foci that he used to channel his magic to my purpose.

In between business, I addressed pleasure. Idle, simple pleasure. One of Nate's issues, I knew, was that Harry never seemed to choose to spend time with me. I changed that. I sought him out when I had the time, listening as he explained magical theory or displayed his latest piece of work. A brief survey of his room told me his reading interests, mysteries and science fiction predominant, with a heavy and surprising dose of physics.

My knowledge of physics was rudimentary at best, but the fiction I could handle. I chivvied him into discussions over dinner about his latest reads. It was slow, but he began to open up, to get into the conversations. Toward the end, he even sought me out one late afternoon to complain about an authors misunderstanding of their own character. I could see that the interaction eased some of Nate's worry. Nate wasn't aware of the dreams I indulged in late at night, or the increasing frequency of thought that slipped through Harry's defenses. And how often those thoughts contained fragments of my dreams.

McCoy's appearance changed everything.

He showed up in the lobby of one of my newer businesses one morning. Harry was out in the occult shops with Franklin, picking up some odd ingredients that he needed when the old man arrived. I was grateful for that much at least.

McCoy didn't glare around my office. He barely seemed to notice anything except for my own person as my men led him inside and closed the door.

“Wizard McCoy.”

“I want to buy Harry back from you. I'll give you half again what you paid for him.” I quirked my head to one side, speculative. That was quite a lot of money. Far more than I would have thought someone like McCoy would possess.

“A generous offer, but I'm afraid I must decline.”

“Double.”

“It's not the money. I have Harry. I will keep him. That is the end of the discussion.” I rose. “Perhaps you should invest in a telephone, Wizard McCoy. It would have saved you the drive.”

“This ain't over, boy.”

I should have listened. It's painful to realize that I was still capable of becoming complacent. I believed that McCoy, being an old man, would turn to bureaucratic channels. Try to find some loophole to force me to relinquish Harry. I did not expect him to take the direct route.

I woke in the middle of the night several days later, a buzzing, burning sense of _wrong_ and _missing_ coursing through me. Harry. Harry was gone. The feel of him, the fragments of thought and emotion that I had become accustomed to, vanished. My head spun as I pulled myself out of bed, my body feeling oddly disconnected from my mind. It had been a while, but I recognized the feeling. Drugged. Nothing too strong, just enough to make me sleep deeply.

My mind supplied a flash of Harry bringing me a mug of hot tea a few hours before I went to bed. I found my feet and stumbled out of my room, into Harry's. He wasn't there. I grimaced, barring my teeth. The collar would react, now that I knew Harry was gone. It would start to work on him, to hurt him. Unless he'd- unless _McCoy_ had found some way to get it off or to neutralise it. The intercoms on the second floor had stopped working a week after Harry moved in. I began to hurry down the stairs, to rouse Nate and begin the search for Harry.

I met Harry in the main hall.

He was dressed, dark jeans and shirt, his backpack slung over one shoulder. His face was drawn, strained. I didn't even think. I grabbed him, ripped the bag off his shoulder and snarled, shoving him backwards. Harry stumbled but did not fall.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Eb. Eb said that I needed to go with him. That he could fix everything. But I couldn't.” His fingers found the collar, twisted around it, pulling. “I tried. I tried to leave and I _can't_!” He swung at me, a school yard blow, all emotion and no skill. I dodged and watched him catch himself, his breathing harsh, fast. Harry tried to hit me again. I let him, dodging the blows rather than simply commanding him to stop. He fell to his knees after the third or fourth attempt, beating at the marble with his fists and screaming. 

Nate appeared, gun in hand. He took in the scene, the bag and holstered the gun. The tilt of his head asked whether or not I needed him. I shook my own head. I had this under control. He disappeared down the hall, though I had no doubt that he was only out of sight, not completely gone.

“Why?” Harry looked up at me, confused and angry. “Why can't I leave? I don't- I miss Eb! I miss the farm and I- you- why did I have to come back?”

I sat down beside him, laid my arm over his shoulders. He leaned into me, warm and seemingly grateful for the contact.

“Because you know this is where you belong, Harry. Here with me, in Chicago.”

“I don't-” He shook his head. The sense of him was slowly returning. Confusion, the odd surge of tingling ease that came of laying down a burden.

“He lied to you, didn't he? All those years you lived with him. He never told you that they were going to come one day and take you away. Sell you to someone like me.” Harry went stone still, waiting. “I've never lied to you, Harry. Not once.” I didn't have to lie to Harry.

“Eb loves me. Like a son.” It was a whispered mantra.

“Why didn't he warn you, then? Prepare you? Fight for you when Warden Morgan came? He vanished, didn't he? And it took him two months to even bother to come looking for you. How is that love?” Believe me. This is the best place for you.

He shuddered, sighed and slumped.

“You understand now, Harry?”

“Yes. I belong here.” Harry turned, just enough to be able to press a soft kiss to the corner of my mouth, stubble scraping as he did so.

“Yes, you do.” I ran my hand down his back, sliding it up under his shirt to feel the smooth skin, the line of his spine guiding me up. He relaxed into the touch, the last bit of tension slipping out of him. “You made a mistake, Harry. Trying to leave. You know that now. But I need to fix this. And part of that means that I have to punish you.” He winced, tensing. I pressed the heel of my hand into the base of his spine, massaging gently. “It's okay. I won't hurt you. But there are rules, an agreement that I signed with the Council. I need to report McCoy to the Council so that they understand what he's doing. But I need to be seen holding up my end of the deal. I need to be able to say that I punished you, under oath.”

I helped him up and led him to a small door in a narrow back corner of the house. The room had originally been a storage closet. Roomy enough for that, but tiny for a bedroom. Harry hesitated at the door, but I urged him in. I'd never had anyone clear the room out – one never knew when one might have need for a secure place to hold a man. 

Harry stood in the middle of the room, hunched a little due to a low ceiling. He looked lost. In the uncertain light from the window it looked like the markings of the collar were moving, locking together in new formations. 

“It's just for a little while, Harry. I'm sorry. You are not allowed to use your magic while you're in this room.” I shut the door, slid the bolt home.


	5. Chapter 5

-5-

The Council, among it's many flaws, is a bureaucracy. There are hoops upon hoops to be got through in order to reach anyone with any actual power. It's maddening. Of course, there are shortcuts. Calling and informing the wizard answering the phone, most likely an apprentice or one who has just made their bones and become a full wizard, that you are lodging a complaint of attempted theft and interference with a collared warlock gets an immediate response.

Warden Morgan and his commander, a sharp old woman who introduced herself only as Luccio, arrived outside of my home the next day.

“You realize that these are serious accusations, Mr. Marcone? What proof do you offer?” I took a sip from my coffee and let silence fill the room for a moment.

“Wizard McCoy attempted to purchase Harry back from me. I refused and within the week I wake to find myself drugged and Harry returning from an ill conceived attempt to escape. Harry himself told me that it was McCoy's idea, but that he realized the error in what he was doing and turned back.”

“And you believe the warlock?” Luccio drummed her fingers slowly on one knee, her eyes slightly out of focus. I had spent enough time around Harry when he was working magic to recognize the look and the faintly electrified and too full feeling of the air around us. She was working a spell. It wasn't anything dangerous or harmful, the protections that Harry had built around the house did not sound. A truth spell, perhaps. The wizardly equivalent of a lie detector.

“I do. He had to have turned back long before I woke, before the collar could have reacted to my knowledge that Harry had run away. And he has accepted his punishment without complaint. Up until this point Harry has been a model slave, Wardens. I firmly believe that it is entirely McCoy's influence that led him to this.” Morgan looked at Luccio who gave a small nod of her head. 

“We will need to see the warlock.”

“Of course. I'll have him brought-”

“No.” Luccio rose, her body strong in spite of what I took to be greatly advanced years, even for a wizard. “We will see the warlock where he is. You have no objections?”

“Certainly. If you'll follow me?”

I led them through the house to Harry's temporary room. The bolt was well oiled and slid back easily as I worked it and pulled on the door, nothing making a sound. The three of us stepped in, with Morgan standing closest to the door, blocking it.

Harry was on the cot, just unfolding from the comfortable sprawl he'd been engaged in. The book I'd brought him that morning slid off of his lap and onto the floor. When he saw Morgan he twitched and I felt the fear that clawed into him. He was afraid of Morgan. Every time he saw Morgan something bad happened – most of the time Morgan's presence had meant violent upheaval in his life.

“Ma'am. Sir.” He nodded respectfully to Luccio and Morgan in turn. We'd discussed this the day before when I'd brought him his dinner. Neither of them responded and I felt the same heavy, electrified feeling that I'd felt in my office fill the room. Luccio's spell was once again up and running.

“Your master informs us that you tried to run away. Is this true?”

“Yes ma'am.”

“Why?”

“I miss the farm, and Eb and my friends. I don't like it here. I wanted to go home and Eb said that I could, if I could slip away without John noticing.”

“Yet you returned, without the collars urging?” Harry ducked his head, clearly trying to put what he wanted to say in order.

“Yes. I don't know why. I got a few blocks away and I- I started having thoughts. About being here. And...things.” He waved his hand in a vague gesture. “And then I had to come back. I was hoping I could get back up to my room without anyone noticing, but John caught me coming in.”

“How did Wizard McCoy contact you, to set up this escape?”

“The speaking stones. We'd been using them for long distance communication and I kept mine when- when I had to leave. He called me on it last week, after he'd been in to see John.”

I produced the small black stone I'd confiscated from Harry and handed it to Warden Luccio. She rolled it in her palm, tracing the carved rune on it in what might have been mistaken for a idle gesture. Her face gave away nothing.

“What did Wizard McCoy tell you would happen once you met up with him?” Harry took a deep breath and glanced at me before returning his gaze to the Warden.

“He said that he could get the spells off the collar and get the collar off me. That we'd go someplace where the Council wouldn't find us, so they couldn't collar me again.”

“Did he explain how this was to be done?”

“No ma'am.” Luccio hmphed and the spell in the air snapped.

“He is telling the truth. Wizard McCoy will need to be dealt with.” She turned to face me. “This is a grave violation of our laws, Mr. Marcone. I apologise on behalf of the Council and assure you that we will make certain Wizard McCoy will not bother you again.”

Fear spiked through me, sharp and real even through the emotional distance that told me it was from Harry. _Please, please don't let them hurt Eb!_ I glanced at Harry quickly. His face gave away nothing, but I could still feel the internal turmoil. In spite of what I'd explained to him about McCoy, he still worried for the old man. Very well.

“Wardens.” Both of the older wizards turned their attention to me. “I know that it is not my place to interfere with internal issues of the Council. But if I might say something?” Luccio tilted her head in a gesture that urged me to go on. “While I cannot condone McCoy's attempt at interference here, I do understand his motivation. Harry lived with him for a long time and I believe that he grew attached to Harry as though Harry were his apprentice in truth. It's led him to this unfortunate pass, and I think what he needs is sympathy and understanding more than harsh punishment. I'm not certain what your course will be, but I'd ask that you keep that in mind as you decide.”

Surprise and a small flutter of hope flared before Harry shut down again. He hadn't actually expected me to speak up for McCoy. He'd asked because he felt that he had to, but he'd expected it to amount to nothing.

“We will consider all of the factors, Mr. Marcone. Wizard McCoy is an elder and respected member of the Council. It is possible that his position has placed too great a burden on him for his age. All of this will be reviewed. I assure you though that he will not bother you again.”

“Thank you.”

After they had gone I stopped into the kitchen and picked up a small plate of sliced apples I'd asked be prepared.

Harry was at the window in his cell, his arms resting on the small sill that the bars left and staring out, watching the late summer insects moving through the grounds. I set the plate down on the cot and sat beside it, watching him for a few seconds. He finally turned away, moving to face me, his hands behind his back as he leaned against the wall.

“You should eat something. Dinner won't be for another few hours.”

“Thank you. For speaking up for Eb.”

“Of course. You love the man, whether he deserves that affection or not. I know that it would hurt you to know that something happened to him. And I don't want to hurt you.” He frowned.

“But you- you _did_.”

“When? In the hall when you were running away? I lost my control for a moment. I was worried, I explained that to you. What the-”

“ _No_. Before. After the Haitians tried to kill us. In the car, and then later.”

“Did I hurt you? I don't recall hurting you, Harry. You came to me, remember? Both in the car and then in my bedroom. In my shower. Isn't that so?”

“Y-yes. But-” He shoved away from the wall, pacing as best he could. “I didn't...I don't think I meant to do those things.”

“I see. Harry, when I give you orders, can you tell that they're from me? Even when I don't speak them?”

“Yes.” He stopped, glaring at the door and then at me. “Most of the time. Sometimes...sometimes it's hard.”

“So think back. Do you remember me telling you to touch me in the car? Or to try to masturbate in my shower?”

“ _No_!” It was a half shouted snarl. “But I don't remember thinking them myself, either! You slid close to me in the car and it seemed like I should touch you. And then I was in my room, after you wouldn't let me _come_ and I was trying to- trying to find a way around the order and I thought 'the shower', and then I was in there, waiting for you. But those aren't things I'd normally-”

“Harry. You just said, 'I thought'. So the idea to wait in the shower was yours, wasn't it?” A subtle hand, that appeared to be the key. “And if that was your idea, then maybe the rest was too.” I patted the cot beside the plate and then got to my feet. Harry stepped out of the way so I could get to the door. “Think about it, Harry. You were hyped up, stressed. You've been running on nervous energy since we met. All of that, and you're still very...young.” Hormonal. “You did enjoy yourself, didn't you?” I stood in the door, ready to swing it shut again. He was flushing bright red, nearly squirming where he stood. “I'll see you in a few hours, Harry.”

Graham and Driggs brought in the small table and my chair as well as the actual food. Harry sat, his entire attitude one of strangled impatience for them to be gone, his right foot tapping against the concrete floor.

“I didn't enjoy it. Not all of it.” As soon as they'd shut the door it slapped out of his mouth, as though he were desperate to get it said.

“I see. Start eating. It isn't as good cold.” He jabbed his spoon into the stew and started to eat, inhaling the food. I couldn't decide if Lucinda would have been pleased to see his healthy appetite or appalled at his lack of appreciation for her work. “What didn't you enjoy?”

“The- you making me wait. Even if- the other stuff. But not that. It hurt and then it went beyond hurting until I couldn't think except for- and then you.” He stumbled to a halt, attacking his soup once more. I let him eat for a few minutes, the flush fading from his throat slowly.

“Are you certain you didn't like it Harry? Not even a little?” He shook his head. “You're young, so I know you haven't experimented much. But the anticipation, the...control. Didn't it heighten everything? Make it more intense? Better?”

Harry muttered at me. I couldn't understand a word of it, but it didn't matter. He was leaking again, thoughts and fragments of emotion getting through to me. He was remembering it all, through the haze of distance and lust, fuzzy and out of focus. But just the memory was making him hard. 

One particularly clear image came to him, to me. My own face, eyes darker than what I knew in the mirror, my mouth set in a harsh line even as a glitter of amusement crossed my features. Coming for him as he lay in the shower, wet and hard, so very, very hard, unable to do anything about it, his mind gone through the pain and into something else, something that carried him along floating, waiting for the touch that would focus his diffused ecstasy into something deep and real, something he could feel. And then my hands, my breath against his body, taking him higher and deeper, to where even thought ceased, to where all that existed was the electrical storm in his body and my touch driving it higher.

“Harry.” I said his name softly. He clenched his hand around the spoon and refused to look at me. “I want to do it again. I want to touch you like that. Make you feel pleasure, things that you didn't even know were possible. I want to keep going, to take you.” I conjured up an image, something of a favorite, if I were to be honest.

It was a simple one. No props, no great spanning build up. My office, here at the house. Paperwork strewn everywhere, leaning back in my chair, only my pants undone, my erection standing up, slick and proud. Harry, naked but for the collar. Sitting on me, slowly. Taking my length in. His eyes half closed, gasping as I stretched him open, hollowed him out for me. His own erection, bound into place by the heavy black ring of leather at its base bumping over my stomach, smearing a snails trail of clear pre-come behind it.

Silverware clattered to the table. Harry had a death grip on the edge, fingers digging into the wood. He was staring at me, his lips slightly parted, moist.

“Stars-”

“You're hard, aren't you?” Answer me.

“Y-yes.” He closed his eyes, shutting me out, away.

“Would you like to do something with that, Harry?” I scooted my own chair back and slid the light table away, Harry losing his grip on it as I did. With it against the door there was nothing but space between Harry and myself. “You can, if you like. Touch yourself. I won't lay a hand on you.”

He never opened his eyes as he fumbled with the button of his fly, the zipper going down with a metallic scream. Harry was just as lovely as I remembered, pale and long, the veins standing out on him in artistic swirls, throbbing in time with his heart.

His breath was a quick pant as he took himself in hand, stroking once, his grip shaky. He winced and coughed, spitting a little into his palm before he touched himself again. Not the best, but it was enough. Harry's pace was quick, his goal the only thing in mind. I shifted enough to make my chair squeak and his eyes opened, his rhythm faltering.

“Slow, Harry. Slow. Tease yourself. Like this.” I ran my hand up my thigh slowly, as if I was trying to learn every warp and weave of the fabric. Then back down, the same way. Harry bit his lip and began to match my pace, sweat beading on his lip, his chest. His shirt began to stick to him, outlining the shift of muscle as he moved, the taut peaks of his nipples as they rubbed against the soft cotton.

I talked him through it, my voice soft, even, never betraying the growing urgency of my own arousal. We focused only on Harry, on how it felt to touch himself, to take it slow, draw it out. To the sound of my voice, telling him what to do, and the pleasure that built in a wave of inevitability. When it finally came, when his orgasm could no longer be denied he shoved his free hand into his mouth and bit, to muffle the cry.

As he leaned back, panting, getting his body back under control I palmed myself, shifting so that I'd be able to walk. Patience. Later, in only a few minutes, I would be in my own room and I would bring myself off to the image of Harry on his bed in this room, lost to the simple pleasure of his own hand at my direction.

“Did you like that, Harry?”

“Yes.”

“Even though I made you wait, take it slower? Delay?”

“Yes, but it wasn't the same.”

“No. It was less. Less intense. Right?” He didn't answer, but I could see the answer in his face, his body. Of course it was. “But it was good, just like the other night was good. You just didn't understand it yet. I moved too fast.” I stood and crossed the small room, running my fingers through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “I'm sorry, Harry. I won't do that again. I won't push you too hard. Not until you're ready.”

I pulled the table out of the way and banged on the door. Driggs opened it and I gestured for them to clear the space. They moved as quickly as possible in the small room, both ignoring Harry. He had yanked his pillow down over his lap when they came in but the scent of his release filled the air and it was impossible to look at him and not know what he'd been doing.

“I'll see you in the morning, Harry.”

The week of Harry's confinement passed slowly. I continued to bring him his meals and any entertainment he might ask for. We did not repeat the performance of that second evening. There were several moments when it seemed as though Harry was about to say something, to broach the subject but he always backed off, leaving it lying there between us. I waited, patient. It would come.

On the fifth day, I asked Harry if he'd like to go outside for a short walk. He practically teleported out of the room he was so excited with the prospect. We didn't walk far. To the edge of the new construction and back. I was having the purple wood 'cabanas' taken down and heavy landscaping done. They were building a hill that was going to house a small replica of a ruined temple I'd seen in northern Italy as a child. It had been a lonely, beautiful place and the image had stayed with me.

It was on our third circuit of the same path that a large hawk passed over head. We looked up to see that it had some small animal in its claws, still alive and struggling. It flew over and Harry started to jog, heading off the path to follow it.

“Harry!” I followed him, curious. The hawk's prey, it looked only small and fuzzy from this distance, maybe grey, maybe white, must have done something. The hawk screeched and dove, tumbling closer to the earth before it tried to bank over a small copse of trees. The squirming thing moved again, a thin, angry yowl coming from it and the hawk didn't get the altitude it needed. It smacked into the trees, disappearing. A few seconds later it burst out of the top, it's talons empty.

Harry dove into the trees, crashing around. After a minute the sounds stopped, then resumed at a less frantic pace. When he emerged he was cradling something against his stomach.

“He's still alive!” I met him and looked down. There was a small grey kitten in his hands. The tail was torn, gouges along his back, blood seeping into the downy fur. “He needs a vet.” Harry held the kitten out a bit, in order to rearrange his shirt so that he could press it against one wound that seemed to be the deepest.

“Alright. We'll grab some towels on the way to the garage.” There came that brief flash of gratitude again, breaking through the wall and then gone. Such little things, to win me so much progress.


	6. Chapter 6

-6-

The kitten's wounds turned out to be serious, but not fatal. An hour or so of cleaning, stitching and then general cat health concern and he was declared a free feline.

Harry clutched the little fuzz ball as though he was glass, petting around the bandages and keeping up a steady litany of chatter. The kitten, for his part, blinked blearily up at us and then fell asleep. We stopped by one of those large chain pet stores and picked up the basics, litter pan, litter, food, the little dishes and some toys.

When we got back to the house I grabbed the bags and started to carry them upstairs to Harry's room. Harry's footsteps behind me faltered and I looked back. He'd been heading for the other room, kitten and one bag in hand.

“Um. John?”

“I think you've spent enough time down there, don't you? The Council is satisfied, and I know you've learned your lesson. Unless you want to finish out the rest of the week?” He laughed, an abrupt explosion of sound.

“No. No.” He clambered up the stairs behind me. The kitten batted at him once, displeased with the jostling of his ride and Harry slowed down a bit.

We set the kitten up in Harry's bathroom and closed the door, leaving him to finish sleeping off the days adventures and the anesthetic the vet had given him. I was leaving when Harry came up behind me, his hand grasping my upper arm. I stopped, looking at him.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

The kitten wound up being called 'Mister' by virtue of Harry being unable to pick a real name. He tried a lot of things, some names from Arthurian legends, some from the novels he read. The poor thing ran around for a week being called Atreides, and another being called Ramses from some mystery series he was in the middle of. I was thankful that the Aziraphale phase was short lived, mostly due to no one being certain how to pronounce it. In the end we called him 'Mister Mouth' or 'Mister Fuzzbucket' so often that the only thing that stuck was the Mister.

He recovered from his wounds and grew quickly, a welcome distraction for Harry when there wasn't any work for him to be doing. The upkeep and updating of the wards didn't take all of his time and while I took him to most of my meetings, there were some where it simply wasn't appropriate. 

It was three weeks before he came to me. I'd have laid money on him only lasting two, but then I never claimed to be a psychic.

Nathan and I came back late from a meeting. It hadn't been the kind that I needed Harry for. The bloodshed was scheduled and controlled. Harry was in my bed. Not sprawled in an attempt at seduction, just there beneath the sheets, awake and waiting. Nervous.

“Harry, is there something you need?” He sat up, the sheet puddling in his lap.

“I wanted to thank you. For Mister. For letting me out.” Harry tugged at the sheets. In the dim light his eyes looked huge, unfocused. “I've been...dreaming.” Of course he had. I'd been doing my best to dream of him every night. That seemed to work best, for the subtle changes I wanted. To slip things through with no resistance. “I thought-” He shook his head, his eyes clearing. “I don't know. I-”

“It's okay, Harry. I understand. But you don't have to do it like this. I didn't let you have Mister or end your punishment to make you feel grateful,” Or not _just_ for that reason. “I did it to make you happy and because the punishment had gone on long enough. Once the lesson has been learned, it's just cruelty to keep going.” I found his pajama pants and handed them to him. He pulled them on and moved past me for the door. “Harry.” He froze, his hand on the knob. “I told you before. I want you.” And you want me. I've made certain of that. “Come to me again and I will take you. Do you understand?” He swallowed hard, but gave me a single nod. Then he was gone.

“We've got a problem, Boss.” Nate laid a folder down on my desk. The sun was high, almost too hot through the floor to ceiling windows. This office needed shades, desperately. Harry was one floor down, examining a small magical panic room that he'd designed. “Gregson went home to visit his gramma a couple weeks ago. She complained that some of the neighborhood kids had up and run away. Not the usual sort, the ones with trouble at home, but the others. The ones who stay. It seemed suspicious so he reported it up the chain and we looked into it.

“The kids didn't run anywhere. They've all been taken, someplace under the city. We haven't been able to get real close, whatever's doing it is smart and quick. These are the bits of a look we've managed to get.” I opened the folder. Behind the brief folios on each missing child, the youngest a boy of twelve who had vanished between the bus stop and his apartment, were the photos of the creatures. Black, slimy skin, their arms too long for their bodies, though vaguely humanoid somehow. The heads were bat like, if a bat was horribly mutated, grown massive and vicious as no natural animal could ever be.

“What are they?”

“Not sure. I figure we check with the kid, find out what the hell's going on and then we kill them all dead.”

“It has the virtue of simplicity. Call Harry up.”

“Vampires. Red Court, I think.” Harry looked at the pictures, disgust plain on his face. “They're really nasty. They don't look like this all the time. Most of the time they look like people. It's sort of a...suit. A people suit. But this is their real form. 

“They drink blood and their saliva is some sort of drug. It makes whoever they're feeding on complacent, makes them enjoy it. Crave it.” His voice trailed off, the distant look I'd been seeing in his eyes every so often returning. I coughed and tapped my finger on the glass of the table top. “Uh. Strong, fast, they can hypnotize you with their eyes, too, if they're strong enough.”

“How do we kill them?”

“Sunlight fucks them up. Beheading. But if there's a few of them down there, I'd guess fire would be best.” He had one of the children in front of him and his eyes kept going back to it. One of the older children, hardly a child anymore, really. Sixteen. Dark brown hair, black eyes. He was smiling in the small photo, laughing at something.

“What about the children?” He bit his lip.

“Probably they're dead. Probably. Or turned.” He looked sick. “Either way, I don't think there's anyone left to rescue. Not unless they take someone else right before you show up.”

In the end the operation was simple, though that did not mean that it was easy. It took a day or so for the location of the nest to be verified. Harry had apparently been fostering some contacts in the local spirit world and he had managed to capture a small faerie who agreed to tell him where the vampires were in exchange for his freedom.

We burned them out in the middle of the day, under the city. Harry had grown more and more tense leading up to the moment, but when the time came he did wonderfully. My men had flamethrowers, but they barely held a candle to Harry. Fire, one of the most chaotic elements, bent easily to his will. It was hypnotic, watching him rain golden destruction on the creatures. And frightening. I had known Harry was powerful, that was a major factor in my choosing him after all. But this. I hadn't understood, not really.

It made me want him more, something I would have said was impossible. All of that power, that ferocity, under my control.

Nate must have seen something in my face, or the way I kept Harry near me during the clean-up. He insisted that Harry ride up front with him on the way back to the house. I sat back, in full view of the rear-view mirror and tried to look virtuous and unconcerned. I'm certain I managed the last at least.

Nathan kept Harry with him the rest of the day and the pair vanished after dinner. After maybe two hours I went looking. They were in Harry's bedroom. Some place where Nate thought that Harry would feel safe, secure. It was typical of him. Always the cleverest person in the room, that was Nate. I leaned close to the door and listened in.

“-I dream about him. About having sex with him. Not just what we did, but other stuff. Like...things.” I imagined the helpless gesture. Confused and unwilling to start giving Nate details about what he thought were his private fantasies. Harry was probably blushing. “And I think. I mean, I don't remember some things. Like, why I did some of them. Just that I did. I think they were my ideas. They don't feel like they do when John makes me do something.

“And he sent me away, that night. If he was making me want him, he wouldn't do that, would he?” Of course not. That wouldn't make any sense. “That doesn't make any sense, does it? To have what you've been trying to get offered to you and turn it away? So that must mean that it's just me.”

“Are you sure, Harry? If you're sure, I won't- I just need you to be sure.”

“I'm as sure as I can be, Nate. I just don't know how much good that does anymore.”

Harry didn't work up the nerve to knock on my door until about one the next morning. I let him in, watched him walk over to the bed as I locked the door behind him.

“You remember what I told you before, Harry? I want you to be sure. This is your choice, isn't it?” He hesitated, then nodded. “No. I need you to say it.” Harry cleared his throat and met my eyes.

“Yes. I want this. I do.” Finally.

“Good. Strip.” Harry lost his clothes quickly, tossing them all in the same general direction. Done, he stood there, waiting, the flush of his neck creeping down to his chest. He was only half hard and I felt a trickle of embarrassment come from him. He didn't like me staring at him for so long.

I crossed the room and pressed against him, the cloth of my suit rubbing across his skin as I pulled him down for a kiss. He breathed a moan into the kiss, his hips making a slow circling motion, rubbing his growing erection over the feel of it. I responded through the cloth, bumping my own hips forward to let him feel what he was doing to me. He bit carefully at my tongue when I slipped it into his mouth. I tugged at his hair and we both throbbed, grinding against one another. When we were both hard and panting I broke the kiss, pulling away from him.

“Go lay on the bed.” Harry brought those long, clever fingers up to his mouth and brushed them across swollen lips, his eyes gone dark with lust. 

He staggered the step or so to the bed and practically fell into it, kicking at the comforter as he did, knocking it off the end of the bed. I waited until he was somewhere in the middle, his head and shoulders propped up on the pillows, watching me. I removed my jacket and carefully laid it over the arm of one chair. My tie I threw on the bed. Harry picked it up and ran it through his hands as he watched me slide out of my holster, my shirt. It wasn't until I was laying my slacks on the pile that he spoke.

“What's this for?” I climbed into the bed and took it from him.

“Plenty of things. Imagine this,” I ran the end of it over his chest, down his arm. He made a pleased sound and his fingers found my thigh, pressing in. “Wrapped around your cock. Being stroked over it, the smooth glide of it. Or around your wrists.” I wrapped the tie around the nearest wrist, tight enough that he could feel the strength in it. I pulled his hand off of my leg and lifted it over his head, holding the fabric taut as I did. “Keeping you in place for me, even as it lets you squirm and fight.” I let the cloth go, running it down his arm again. “Or over your eyes.” I slid the strip over his eyes as I said it.

Panic flooded through me, Harry's heart suddenly beating in my chest at a million miles an hour. He jerked away and shoved at me, nearly sending me off the bed as he did so. I was faced with a memory, not my own, of a heavy black hood over my head, unable to see, smoke and death in my lungs as they labored to get a deep breath. Voices around me and then the light, being held down, certain I was about to die just before the burning came, and the collar.

“No.” I shook the memory away to find Harry crouched at the head of the bed, staring at the tie between us as though it was a venomous serpent.

“No. Not that.” I agreed and I picked my tie up and dropped it over the edge of the bed. Harry watched it go, his heart slowly dropping back down to normal. “I'm sorry. I didn't know.” He shrugged, seeming to dismiss it. I knew better. The fear was still there, ice in his veins, stealing his voice. I crawled over to him, wrapped my arms around him. He'd started to go soft, the memory killing his arousal. “We don't have to do this tonight, Harry.” Sympathetic. Kind. I'm just worried about you, Harry, that's all.

“I- I do want it. I do.” Wonderful. If only he still didn't sound so much like he was trying to convince himself. “But I'm not-” He shifted his hips, drew attention to his flagging erection.

“That's not a problem.” I let him go, turned so that I was at a slight angle to him. He watched as I lifted my legs, planting my feet spread so that he could see everything. See me hard for him, leaking a little already as I reached into the night stand and pulled out the small tube of slick I kept there.

I traced the familiar edges of myself with warm, wet fingers, no need to think about it, to consider. My attention was all for Harry. After all, I'd jerked off hundreds of times. I'd never had Harry watch me before. His eyes followed the pulse and whirl of my fingers as I moved them over my sex slowly, the familiar weight comfortable. This. Mine. Always. Like Harry himself.

I did my best to project my arousal, to let it fill Harry like the heat of it filled the air and he grew fully hard again, a slender length bobbing against his stomach as he breathed. One hand reached for it and I was surprised when he stopped without touching, his hand clenching into a fist only an inch from his goal before he slid it back out of sight behind himself. Surprised and pleased.

I rolled the ball of my thumb over the sensitive head, my other hand drifting back, down and blow, the angle bad so that I could just barely press against my entrance, feel the hot resistance followed by the grip, the release, a tiny, impossibly heated mouth. Harry whined and moved, his hands on my legs, trembling as he touched, stroking, nothing more than a gentle stroke up and down my calves. His eyes were all for what I was doing to myself for him.

This close, with the little bit of blood not pooled in my dick pounding in my temples I couldn't help but make the comparison. Harry was longer than I was, but not as thick. He'd been so tight, even nearly passed out, muscles loose and yielding. I would have to be careful. The image of Harry spread face down on the dining room table sparked through me. His fingers gripping the edge with white knuckle intensity as I worked a plug into him, stretching him for me, making him the perfect fit.

My image of Harry's hungry little hole closing around the plug, swallowing it up except for the base, my hand pressing on it, pulling, working it in him. Sobbing pleas for more falling from his lips. I came with a shout, his name tumbling from my lips.

Harry watched me come, his eyes dark and wild as I painted his chest white, some of it dripping off, spattering onto his dick.

“Harry,” I gasped out, fighting to get my breathing back under control. “Go ahead. Come.” His hand left me with speed, gripping himself and using my come to ease the way. He didn't last long, his long body bowing forward, one hand braced on my knee as he gave that final squeeze, the last glide up and down his length before he was coming, our seed mingling together on the bed between us, on our bodies. When it was done Harry went boneless, collapsing to one side, his breath nearly the sobbing begging that I had heard in my fantasy.

I let him lay there for a few minutes, winding down, before I rose and urged him to his feet, into the shower. While he was getting the water going in there I stripped the bed and threw down a top sheet, roughly tucking it in. It would do for the night. Then I went to join him.

It wasn't my nightmare. I had enough of my own to know the shape of them, the feel. This was different. Fragmentary.

A young woman, familiar in a way that tugged painfully at my heart though I knew with certainty I had never seen her before, long brown hair blowing in a phantom wind, blood painted down her body, twisting before my eyes as she chanted. Unable to move. A man, love turned to bitter hate stabbing me, his hands on my head, at the temples, something cold, slick and _wrong_ trying to get into me through his hands. An explosion, pain, fear, screaming. Running. A woman with long red hair and golden eyes, the barest flash and then the man again. Flames. A stick figure of a human being silhouetted inside a burning house. Terror that threatened to burst my heart as I ran, someone following me and then a bright flash of light, my body unable to move any longer, locked in a rigorous spasm that _hurt_ , every muscle clenched until they felt like they would tear from my bones. Footsteps over leaves. Warden Morgan's face and a blow that sent me into a blackness that offered no relief.

I came awake wrapped around Harry. He was still asleep, twisting and jerking, making the muffled sounds of someone deep in a nightmare. The dream had been his, of course. Nightmares, he'd said in the hotel bathroom. Nothing, he'd said. That had not been 'nothing'. Harry arched in my arms, his hands claws that dug at my sides, my chest. I held on and let my forehead drop to his, projecting calm at him the way I had learned to send him my dreams. 

He slowly went still and silent, relaxing finally into what I thought would be a restful sleep. I remained where I was, holding him and thinking.


	7. Chapter 7

-7-

I didn't press the issue first thing in the morning. Harry hadn't appeared to have any more nightmares but when he woke he seemed strained. I let it be and acted as though nothing strange had happened. My apparent ignorance of his nightmare seemed to ease his worry.

Later that day when the sun was high and the idea of darkness and the things that lurked in it seemed far away and laughable, I found Harry in his room reading and doing problems out of a college calculus text book that I recognized as having belonged to Nate. Mister was laying in the middle of Harry's back, a rumbling purr that seemed entirely disproportionate from a kitten of his size filling the room.

Harry craned his neck around to see me without dislodging the kitten and his face asked why I was here even before he began to open his mouth.

“You understand that?” I walked to the side of the bed and gestured at the figures in the book. I'd suffered through the required courses myself, but I wouldn't have passed without Nate's help. As soon as I'd been through with it all I'd forgotten everything I didn't have a practical need for. Calculus had been among the things I'd happily let go.

“Some of it. Nate's been teaching me off and on when we have free time. I'm not very far in the text yet.” He rolled gently, sliding Mister off. The kitten sneezed in a way that somehow managed to express displeasure at this new state of affairs and jumped down, vanishing into the open bathroom door. “It's really interesting. I like math. It's like- everything works the way it's supposed to. If you understand the rules, know how things work then you can get the answer every time. It's clean. Nate likes to call it 'elegant'.” Harry sat up. “Did you need something?”

“I want to talk to you about something.” He tilted his head, eyes narrowing. “Last night, you had a nightmare.”

“Did I?” The nonchalance in his voice was heavy, forced. “I'm sorry if I woke you up.”

“That's not important. I'm worried about this. You spoke a little. About a fire and people being trapped. Burning. You mentioned Warden Morgan and the Council.”

“Really?” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, jostling the collar. Sunlight danced on the metal, something it shouldn't have done against the dull patina. “I don't think I've ever done that before. Talked in my sleep.” He shook his head. “It's nothing. Just stuff.”

“It was not nothing, Harry. You were clearly terrified. I want-”

“No!” I took an instinctive step back as Harry rose, his body tight, hands clenching and unclenching. He stepped into my space, an action that would have been menacing if it had been anyone but Harry and I involved. “No. Don't. I don't want to talk about it. I know you can make me. And I'm asking you not to. It's _private_ and it's in the past. It doesn't make any difference any more and I don't want to think about it. Okay?”

“It obviously is not all in the past or you wouldn't still be dreaming about it.” I set my hands against his shoulders. I could force him, of course. But he would know and this was something he would remember and resent, making everything else harder. It wasn't worth ruining some of my progress when a little patience would net me the same result. “This is hurting you Harry. Maybe not in a physical way, but mental pain is just as real. Sometimes it's worse. I want to help you, but you have to let me.

“I won't make you tell me. But I hope that you will, eventually, want to tell me. That you'll trust me enough and see that I can help you.” I was into the hallway when he spoke, stopping me.

“You wouldn't believe me anyway. No one ever does.”

“Harry, I promise that I will believe you.” We looked at one another for a long moment. For a brief second I thought Harry was going to tell me then, without any need for encouragement. But he just swallowed and shook his head, looking away. He moved with nervous energy to his bookshelves and I left him to it.

Two days later, Ebenezar McCoy was dead.

We didn't hear about it until the day after that, of course. I was on the way home from a luncheon with the mayor when my cell phone rang. Harry, who had never called me before was on the other end, babbling through static and making no sense at all. I managed to get him to hand the phone to someone else after a few minutes. The static didn't get any better, but Franklin at least managed complete sentences.

“Harry got a call about twenty minutes ago. Some guy from Hog Hollow, neighbor of his on the farm. From what Harry's said, they found Mr. McCoy in one of the sheep pens late yesterday afternoon. Harry's listed as McCoy's emergency contact on everything so this guy tracked him down to give him the news.”

“Fantastic.”

“'Scuse me?” Franklin sounded offended. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Never mind. We'll be home in fifteen minutes. Keep an eye on Harry until I get there.” I hung up.

“John? Something going on?”

“The old man dropped dead and some moron called and told Harry over the phone. He's upset.”

“Ah, damn.”

“Exactly.”

McCoy had believed in being prepared at least. He'd made all the arrangements for his funeral and paid ahead of time. Harry, Nate and I drove over on Wednesday. The services weren't until Friday but we had arranged to meet with McCoy's lawyer on that Thursday. McCoy had been cremated but he'd been loved in the town and a memorial before his ashes were scattered had been demanded.

The sun was beginning to set as we pulled into the clearing in front of McCoy's cabin. It already had the feeling of emptiness and abandonment that homes have after the resident has died. It's a different feeling from just being empty when the residents are out or on vacation. It's more hollow, deeper.

Harry climbed out of the car and turned in place, surveying everything.

“It doesn't look any different. I guess I thought things would have changed.” He took a shaky breath. “I didn't think I'd ever be here again. It's weird. Eb should- he should be-” Harry stopped. “Can I go check out the barns real quick? Mr. Hodgins is taking care of the animals but I want to see them.”

“Of course. Are you certain you don't want to stay in town?”

“I'm sure. I'll be in in a- oh. Hey, wait. Let me make sure the wards are all the way down. Shit. I can't believe I didn't think of that before.” Harry made a quick circuit of the house. Once he was satisfied we weren't going to get ourselves blown up opening up the door he took off down a narrow path through the trees.

“You sure we shouldn't go with him?” Nate stared after Harry, frowning. I picked up my bag and Harry's, heading for the door.

“I'm certain he wouldn't thank us for hovering over him now any more than he has for the past few days.” I unlocked the door and stepped into the cabin that time forgot. Nice as it was, it lacked electricity. I'd been pleasantly surprised when Harry had informed me that it had indoor plumbing.

Harry entered a little over a half hour later. He looked tired, as he had since he'd gotten the news but something had eased, with his ability to look over the farm. He was finally _doing_ something. I had the fire going and the lamps all lit. Nate was in the kitchen heating up some soup over the wood burning stove.

“Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, Harry.” He locked the door behind himself and leaned against it.

“I'm really tired. Can I just go up to bed?”

“Are you sure you don't want to eat something?”

“Yeah. Please.” I let him go.

When I climbed to the second floor later he was sprawled in the twin bed in his room, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion. There was only one other bedroom, McCoy's. I considered the closed door for a second and then headed back down the stairs. I'd sleep on the couch.

McCoy's lawyer was a young man who had inherited the practice and McCoy's file from his father. We exchanged the usual condolences and minor pleasantries though the term always seemed wrong when making a visit involving death.

“I want to say again how sorry I am for Mr. McCoy's death. He's been around Hog Hollow since forever and we're all going to miss him.”

“I know. He was great, wasn't he?” Harry and young Mr. Schwarz exchanged nods and fond smiles.

“His will is really very simple. Apart from a few legacies that he left to local institutions, the animal shelter, the library, the police and fire departments he left everything to you.” Schwarz slid a list of assets across the desk to Harry. “There's not a whole lot in the way of physical property. The farm and his truck, basically. But he was very careful with his spending.” Harry said nothing, his eyes wide and glued to the page. I leaned over his shoulder to look.

Ah. McCoy had been very careful with his spending for a very long time. Harry wasn't a millionaire by any means, but he was now very comfortably off.

“We can discuss what you'd like to do with the farm at a later date. I'm sure you want to take the time and talk it over-”

“Sell it.” Harry shoved the paper away. “Mr. Hodgins' farm joins the property and I know he'd take good care of everybody. He and Eb used to- they'd joke about him buying the farm from Eb when Eb decided to retire to the tropics. I want to sell it to him.”

“Well of course you can do that. You can offer it to him first, but-”

“I'll talk to him. He'll buy it.” Grey eyes met mine, pleading for support. I gave the poor lawyer nothing to work with. I didn't care how Harry got rid of the place. He didn't need the money from the sale, certainly, so it didn't matter. All it was was something tying him here.

We stopped by the Hodgins farm afterward. Nate and I sat in the kitchen with Mrs. Hodgins, talking of the same general and harmless topics strangers always discuss. Harry made his arrangements for the farm. He sold it cheap, of course, but he was pleased with it. He knew that the farm would be in the hands of someone who loved it as much as Eb had done. As he had done. And that was what he cared about.

The memorial service was simple, but lovely in the way they are when a close community bands together to mourn. Harry moved through the day in a haze, smiling and chatting with old friends, people he would likely never see again. He ate and worked through the house, packing up personal items and magical effects for us to take back with us in the same way. It was only much later, after Nate had collapsed into the guest bed that he shook it off, cornering me in the kitchen where I was washing the dinner dishes.

“They didn't come. None of his friends from the Council.” It would have been hard to say which word was harsher, 'friends' or 'Council'. He paced the small space, his hands reaching out to touch familiar objects every few steps. “I think- John, I think they killed Eb.” I paused, surprised. I hadn't expected that. I'd considered it myself, of course. With someone as powerful as McCoy had appeared to be, there were a limited number of options for keeping him from doing something that he decided to do.

“Harry, he was very old. It's possible that he simply died.”

“Yeah. But I don't think so. It's too...they killed him because he wanted to help me.” He met my eyes for a moment, just long enough for me to see the sheen of anger there. “Do you think they killed him?”

I considered for a moment. He had made up his mind, that much was clear.

“I think it's possible, yes. But-” The plates and cupboards began to shiver, to shake, rattling. I had a moment to flash back to the original Poltergeist movie and then everything stopped. Harry slammed his fist into the kitchen table before he collapsed into one of the chairs.

“They're such-” His hands were shaking. Anger filled the room, a scorching wave of heat. “Assholes. Self-righteous, murdering- just like him.”

I leaned against the counter, waiting.

“My mom died when I was a baby. My dad died when I was six. Justin-” His voice caught and he coughed. “Justin came for me when I was ten. I thought- he taught me magic. And then he brought Elaine home and I thought we were a family. That he really cared for us. He was hard on us. Mean, I guess. But still.

“Then, maybe he changed? Or maybe he was always like that and I just didn't see it? But I came home one night and he- he and Elaine trapped me. She held me down so he could mess with my mind. Make me into a thrall, a slave.” He grew stiff, not looking at me. “I got free. I ran. But I was hurt. I...eventually I went back. To stop him. To save Elaine. She and I were- you know.” I nodded. “He was waiting for me. I fought him. He died. So did she.

“I tried to go back for her, but the house was on fire and it was too hot. Then Morgan showed up.” He turned his head to me. “I don't know why. He just was there, all of a sudden and he had his sword out and I ran again. I was _scared_!”

“He chased you down. Took you to the Council.”

“Yeah. Must have told them I murdered Elaine and Justin. I tried to explain, but no one would listen. They wouldn't talk to me. They wouldn't even _look at me_! And then they put this fucking collar on me!” And he wound up in the same place this Justin had tried to put him in. Helpless, at the mercy of another, with no way to know his own mind or control anything. Anger rolled through me.

Harry had been lucky, in his own way. McCoy had been too fond of him to use the power he held, and I valued him too highly to use him as badly as I might. I had seen some of the other slaves, seen the rough brokenness of them. That could have been Harry, rather than the Harry I had now, gently guided and moulded to what I needed.

“That's what you dream of. Your nightmare.” He nodded, sullen and pained. “You're afraid they'll come for you again.”

“They did. Morgan came and gave me to you.” I moved to crouch in front of him, my hands on his knees, warm points of contact through his jeans.

“Yes, they did. And you're mine now. I won't ever let them take you again, Harry. I promise. Let me protect you.” He said nothing, closing his eyes, his hands finding mine and just resting there, touching.


	8. Chapter 8

-8-

We stayed on the farm through the weekend, Nate and I packing and Harry ensuring that there were no magical land mines left behind. His mood remained dark, angry. It got a little better once we were away, once he had brought everything back to the house. Harry's room in the basement became crowded but the new material gave him plenty of things to experiment with. He spent most of his time down there in the first week we were back.

Neither of us spoke about his history, about what he had told me of it. But I know that it weighed on his mind even as it ran through my own. I set certain avenues of inquiry in motion. Such things as I was considering were best done slowly. No evidence or trail could lead to me, or to Harry. I left Harry alone, for the most part. Apart from telling him, as often as I could in any way that I could, that he was safe with me, that I would take care of him and protect him, of course. Everything else seemed to be done, sunk in. Pushing harder would make it obvious.

Harry was waiting for me in the hall outside our rooms one evening. He had been locking himself away in his room when he wasn't working magic, so I took this to be an encouraging sign. Nothing was said as he followed me into my room. It was his hand that turned the lock this time.

He crossed the carpet on silent feet, one hand coming to rest on my waist, the other the back of my head. Harry kissed with a brilliant enthusiasm, passionate and demanding while still somehow unsure of himself. I suspected that after Elaine and he stopped 'you knowing' there hadn't been anyone else. Hardly a surprise, given the circumstances. I let him take the lead, yielding when he pushed, encouraging him when he started to falter.

Harry pressed me back, a careful urging as he breathed me in until my legs hit the bed. He broke the kiss and pushed against my shoulder. I smiled as I sat, careful that it didn't appear mocking in any way. I wanted him to feel encouraged, emboldened. He looked down at me, pinching his lips together briefly before his hands dropped to my thighs, a hint of pressure asking me to move. I did, let him move me, spread my legs wider as he carefully dropped to his knees before me. 

My breath caught as his fingers found my fly, shaking ever so slightly as he opened the button, worked the zipper down. I said nothing as he tugged at my slacks, giving himself enough room to slide his hand in, to pull me free, his hand cupped around my growing erection to shield it from the metallic scrape of my zipper.

He licked his lips, nervousness in his features, his every movement. I ran the backs of my fingers over his cheek, sliding my fingers into his hair, loosely holding him. There was no pressure, no strength to my grip. Harry breathed in, slow, and leaned forward, braced against my thighs. The first touch of his mouth was a tease, brief heat and faint pressure. He went too fast, trying to take too much and pulled back quickly, coughing quietly and frowning.

My fingers stirred against the back of his neck and he set his shoulders, moved again. Harry was more cautious this time, his breath rolling along the head, cooling the slick skin there in rapid puffs before he licked his lips, so close to me that his tongue slid over me as well. Harry seemed surprised at something about the contact, then he flicked his tongue out again, swiping it over me in a line that burned hot and then cold.

I let myself squirm at the feeling and he smiled, pleasure spiking off of him. He liked that he could draw such reactions from me. Harry took his time, as though he wanted to be certain that he had tasted every inch of me, licking in quick little movements at first, moving into longer, more drawn out drags over me. The gentle, wet strength of him pressing against me, gliding over me in inexpert enthusiasm. I made muffled sounds, my fingers tensing and relaxing at the back of his head, fighting myself.

Finally, he returned to the head, shining now, stretched and full of my need for him. Harry rolled his eyes to look at me once more before he tentatively took me into his mouth, too wide at first, then the faint scrape of teeth as he tried to find the right place. He worked his tongue around me, awkward, but it was still fine; tiny fingers of fire coiling around me, familiar coils of throbbing pleasure building up and up at the feeling of Harry fighting to take me in, to make me happy. 

In the end, of course, it wasn't quite enough. I shifted my grip on him, applied just enough pressure to start guiding his mouth on me, driving deeper, but careful not to slide in too far, too fast. I didn't want to hurt him, or frighten him off. Not when he was making so much progress, so much effort. Harry ceded control and I fucked his mouth, gently, letting everything build, tight against my spine, until I felt that last drop, the one that breaks the dam and I came, the first pulse surprising Harry. He choked, jerked against my hand and I let him go, let him fall back on his heels as my head fell back, my eyes closing so I could savor the sensation, the long, aching release of pressure, everything splashes of light and darkness against my skin.

When I opened my eyes Harry was still kneeling on the floor in front of me, his eyes wide, breathing fast. I had covered his face, his lower lip and one cheek glistened thickly in the light, an errant streamer slanting over his nose, drops gleaming in his hair. Harry watched me, waiting until I had focused on him again.

“Tell me. Tell me to do it.” He rolled his hips, drawing my attention to the bulge of his jeans, a tiny spot of wetness standing out. “Please.”

I leaned forward and took his head in my hands, so I could watch his face. His hands flew to my wrists, hot and slick with sweat, steady now.

“Come.”

His eyes fell shut as he obeyed, face going slack, relieved as his hips pumped, the wet stain growing with each thrust. I think he stopped breathing until it was over, his body relaxing, going boneless beneath my grip. I released him, eased him to the floor and stripped as I went and wet a washcloth, throwing my clothes into the hamper and wiping myself clean before I turned to go back to Harry.

Harry had risen and stripped by the time I walked back out. He was wiping his face off with his t-shirt.

“Did I...it was okay, right?” I held the washcloth out to him. He took it with a grateful grin and cleaned himself quickly. I ran my hand through his hair and urged him down enough to kiss him, tasting faint echoes of myself on his lips.

“It was wonderful, Harry. Thank you.” He ducked his head away from my hands and disappeared into the bathroom. When he came back he stood beside the bed, playing with the covers. I threw them back from my side and climbed in. “Did you want to sleep in here tonight, Harry?”

“Yes. If you don't mind.” I laughed and patted the other side of the bed.

“Of course not. I love having you near me.” Harry slid beneath the sheets and rolled until he was touching me. I waited a moment, letting silence start to fill the room. “You know, Harry. If you want to sleep with me, you can. You don't have to make an excuse for it.” He tensed.

“That's not-”

“I appreciate the sex, don't get me wrong.” I took hold of his wrist, drew his arm over my chest, pulling him closer. “But we can have this without that too.” He said nothing for a long minute.

“I haven't been sleeping well. Everything with Eb. With the Council. My- I just thought it might be better if I slept with you. I feel better around you.” Harry tucked his head against my shoulder. So he didn't have to look at me. It also meant he couldn't see the small smile that surfaced before I could suppress it.

Harry stayed closer than usual to me after that night. Not clinging by any stretch of the imagination. It was more as though he now felt like he didn't need an excuse to be near me if that was what he thought he wanted.

It was just unfortunate timing that had him with me on the street when the police came to arrest me again.

We were walking with Nate and Franklin trailing a few feet behind, headed for lunch when an unmarked car pulled in front of us. A squad car followed, pulled up to the sidewalk at an angle, blocking us in. Harry tensed and pulled me behind him, shaking his left arm, the shield bracelet slipping out from beneath his sleeve, a faint hum of power barely audible. I recognized one of the men who got out of the car in front of us. A detective in narcotics. Not one of mine. This one had been deemed too stupid and untrustworthy to approach. He was grinning as he came toward us and I set my hand against Harry's back, whispering to him.

“It's okay. They're not going to hurt me. They just want to talk.” The detective, Schmidt, I believed, gave a braying laugh.

“That's right. We just want to talk to you, Johnny. So why don't you make this easy? Tell your boys to back off.” I gave him a polite smile and turned my head to see Nate and Franklin. They knew the drill and were standing quietly, watching but doing nothing. I pulled myself free of Harry and stepped around him. The uniforms from the other car came up to us, a tall, solid man whose name tag read Rawlins and a surprisingly short and compact woman whose name appeared to be Murphy.

“I'm always happy to cooperate with the law, Detective Schmidt. If you'd like, we would be happy to meet you down at the station so that I-”

Schmidt waved his hand through the air in a sharp gesture, shaking his head as though I were a naughty and recalcitrant child.

“I don't think so.” He produced a set of handcuffs and whirled them about on his finger. I sighed internally. Movie cliches already. It was going to be a very long day.

“Do you really believe that those are necessary?” Apparently he did, because he grabbed me and roughly spun me into the side of a building, slapping the ring of one cuff on my wrist and yanking my arm up behind me. I let it happen. My lawyer would have had me out anyway, but police brutality would smooth it all along nicely.

The second of anger and fear I felt from Harry wasn't enough time for me to even begin to turn in his direction, let alone do something. He snarled in the demi-Latinate language he used for spells and a wind whipped across my back, kicking up dust and debris. Someone shouted and there was a thud of impact, Harry's voice rising over the rest of the noise, still flinging spells.

I got my balance and turned in time to see the second detective come up behind Harry and grab him. Harry slammed his arm back at shoulder height, catching the detective in the face before he spun, kicking out in a sweeping arc and taking the other mans legs out from under him. The officers moved for Harry, and I could see the situation degenerating fast. I stepped between them.

“Harry, stop.” He froze, grimacing, one hand still half-raised to throw a punch. “That's enough. I'm going to go with these gentlemen and I'll be home in time for dinner. It's nothing to worry about. Franklin, if you could take Harry back to the car?” I started to tell Harry that he was to go with Franklin and do exactly what he said when Schmidt staggered to his feet, blood running down his face from a cut above one eye.

“Hell no. Little shit attacked two cops. He's under arrest too.” He grabbed the dangling cuff around my wrist and locked the other in place, my arms behind my back. Moron. Harry paled as Officer Murphy came up to him, her face and voice calm but determined as she asked him to turn and put his hands against the wall. He obeyed her, slowly, as if everything was taking a little bit longer to process. He was sick with fear.

“Harry.” He turned his head against the wall to look at me. “It's okay. Be calm. Don't cause any more trouble for them and I'll have us out. Do you understand? Be. Calm.” Harry shuddered and closed his eyes. A bit of color returned to his face though and he did as he was told.

Five hours later, after I'd been released with apologies and Harry had been released on bail, he sat in the back of the car fiddling with the catch on his bracelet.

“I'm not sorry.” I looked at him. “They were assholes. And I'm not sorry I hit them.”

“I'd keep that to myself if I were you when you go in front of the judge, Harry.” He pulled a face at me and turned his head to watch out the window. The radio, which had been thick with static squealed and died. “You didn't do it because they were assholes though, did you? You did it because you were afraid.” He said nothing, which I took for confirmation.

“That guy shouldn't have treated you like that.”

“No, he shouldn't have. And that's why I was released, as I knew I would be, with no charges filed. You, on the other hand, are going to have to jump through some hoops. You need to trust me Harry. Follow my lead. I explained to you what I do, how important it is. The police are going to be involved from time to time, and they are not my biggest fans. Much as I appreciate the thought, there are some situations where beating people up is not the answer.”

“They were taking you. And I-” He didn't finish, just let the sentence die. We both knew, though. It reminded him of every other loss, every time he had been taken away, or someone he loved had been lost to him. “How bad's it gonna be?”

“I doubt it will be serious. First offense and you have youth on your side, as well as the fact that the detectives in question were in the process of arresting me with undue force without cause. My lawyers are very good. You'll eat some crow, be _sorry_ for what you did and that will be that.”

The judge gave Harry community service. Under the circumstances, I thought it fair enough. Harry hated it, but he smiled and made all the right noises during the hearing which was what counted. He wound up being assigned to a soup kitchen that was operated by one of the local churches.

For the first few days if he said anything about it at all it was a complaint. Not that the work was hard, but that it kept him from doing more important things. Working on new, stronger wards. Fashioning new offensive spells, things that could be carried and used by someone without magical talent. I assigned a rotation of men to make their way through the kitchen to keep an eye on Harry without being noticed. They reported that Harry was pleasant to everyone, giving no one cause to complain, but that his mind was clearly elsewhere.

In the middle of his second week there, however, he came home agitated, slamming things around in a typical teenage fit of pique. Harry refused to speak of it so rather than force the issue, which would have set Harry more on edge, I waited for the reports to come in.

The man of the day, a younger member of the organization, reported that one of the officers who had arrested Harry had come down to the soup kitchen. The woman, Murphy. She had sought Harry out and cornered him, questioning him. On the surface it had looked polite enough, but he hadn't been able to get close enough to hear what was being said. Harry had tried to take his leave of her several times during the interrogation, but she had followed, determined.

My man had been on the verge of starting a fight to create a distraction when one of the men who ran the kitchen, a priest named Forthill had taken Harry out of the officer's hands. She'd been angry, but he was a priest and had charge of Harry and his duties that day.

I left instructions for the next days rotation to keep an eye out for Officer Murphy and to keep her from Harry if she did arrive. If she insisted on harassing him, something would have to be done. I also made a note to send a nice anonymous donation to whichever parish the good Father Forthill served at.

Harry was at the kitchen table with Nate when I made my way up to bed, their heads bent over an English Lit. textbook that he must have dug out from the bottom of his closet. They appeared to be having a friendly but heated argument over whether or not William Faulkner was any good at all. When Harry made it up to bed that night he smelled of paper and ink, a faint hint of cigarette smoke. Nate had been indulging, then. He climbed into bed and settled against me, asleep within moments.


	9. Chapter 9

-9-

“Would you like to tell me what Officer Murphy wants with you, Harry?” Harry looked up from his breakfast and sighed, his fork and knife clattering against the plate.

“You're spying on me.”

“It's not spying. The men are just there to make certain that you're safe. Now, tell me what she wants.” He looked as though he were going to try and fight it for a moment, but then he merely shrugged.

“She wants to know about the magic she saw me do. The force spell and the wind. I told her that her eyes were playing tricks on her. It was just me, fighting. There's the whole, 'Marcone's an evil son of a bitch and you should get away from him' thing too, but mostly she wants me to explain how I did it.” He picked up another forkful of waffles. “I know better. You don't tell mundanes. She'll get frustrated or start to explain it away herself and leave me alone after that. It's not a big deal.”

“If she comes back again, do your best to convince her that this isn't worth her time. If she won't be dissuaded, let me know and I'll have it taken care of.”

“What will you do?” He sounded suspicious. I smiled and took hold of his wrist, running my thumb along the knobs of bone there. He was so thin, coltish, though he hated when I used the word.

“You sound as though you think I'll have her assaulted in a dark alley or thrown to the bottom of Lake Michigan. What have people been telling you? If she continues to harass you I'll have it reported to her superiors, Harry. That's all. She'll face some sort of discipline, likely mandatory counseling. They seem fond of that these days. But that's all. The rest of it would just be...unnecessary. Bad business, Harry.”

We ate in silence for a few more minutes.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I want to go back to school. College. I- Eb made sure I graduated high school. I did pretty good. There was some catch-up, since I missed almost a whole year, but- I think I'd do really well. And I'd be more useful, too. Around here.”

I chewed slowly, to give myself time to think. I hadn't expected this. Nathan, of course. It had to be his idea. College. I didn't want to forbid Harry, not outright. He enjoyed learning, I'd seen that. He was young, and hungry. Bored, when I had to keep him here, locked away. But I couldn't let him attend- no. Too open, too uncontrolled. There was no telling who he might encounter. Too many variables to reliably predict.

“I'll have to think about it, Harry. I want you to learn, of course. I know that would make you happy. But it's not that simple.”

“It's that simple for everyone else.”

“We are not everyone else.”

“No.” He dropped his silverware and rose, angry. “We're not. Chicago's crime lord and his cata-” His voice choked off, his hand clutching at his throat, the collar. The runes glowed bright, vibrant blue.

“Don't say that. Not ever.” I took a breath, getting myself under control. “Sit down and finish eating. I won't tolerate anyone insulting you like that Harry, not even yourself. We will talk about college later. I'm not saying no, I'm just saying that it's something that must be considered more carefully. Understand?”

“Yes.” Harry ground the word out, his hand shaking as he picked up his fork and started working on clearing his plate.

Nate dropped a file on my desk and stood over me, glaring. I flicked it open. Harry's school history. I glanced at it and shut it again.

“What's your point?”

“He's smart and deserves this chance and you're being an ass.”

“I didn't say he _couldn't_ go. I just want time to think about it. You know the security issues it's going to cause.”

“I know you, Johnny. You said you'd think about it, but what you meant was no way in hell. You're holding him back and he deserves better than that. Especially from you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means. You're doing it again. 'Taking care of' does not have to mean controlling every aspect of someones life.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I know you mean well, Johnny. You like the kid a lot. He likes you. I can see that. But you don't know how to throttle off. He's going to wind up resenting you for it if you don't actually work something out.”

No, he won't. Not if I don't want him to. He'll see that it's for his own good, eventually. He always does.

“I want Harry to be happy, Nate. I do. You know that. But I also want him to be safe. Until we can be certain that it's absolutely safe for Harry to be alone on a college campus or anywhere else, I can't allow it. Believe it or not, I am looking into some ideas. I know Harry's bored and a bored wizard can't be good for anyone. In the mean time, how's our other project coming along?”

Nate rolled his head, his neck crackling. He gave me a grim, tight smile. He'd questioned my plans until I'd explained to him the truth about Harry's so-called trial.

“We're nearly ready. Everything'll be set by next Wednesday. All we'll need is our guest of honor.”

“I'll make the final arrangements on that front today.”

When the day came, I drugged Harry. It seemed simplest, when I thought over my options, and it would enable both of us to have alibis, should we need them.

I brought him a Coke up in his room and he chugged it down absentmindedly as he explained to me, in great detail, the progress he had made in his earth magic. Once he'd drunk it all down I interrupted him, pressing him back against a bookshelf to kiss him. Surprise gave way to need and the nearly bottomless hunger for any kind of affection that I had begun to understand existed within Harry.

We broke apart and by mutual unspoken agreement slipped out of his room and into mine. Within moments of the door locking behind us we were on the bed, Harry stretched out beneath me, his skin pale with the lack of sunlight winter brought on. We kissed again, tongues tangling together as we tried to devour one another. I dragged one hand up his side, over the strong muscles there, his ribs, his chest, tweaking his nipples, drawing the familiar half-pained gasp from him as I did. I pulled away from him, kneeling between his spread legs and dropped the tube of slick on his stomach.

His eyes were dark, drowning oceans of need as he picked it up, rolling it in his palms. I leaned forward and run my thumb over his lips. He tilted his head up and took the digit in, tongue wrapped around it, sucking and nipping carefully. I tapped my fingers against his cheek and he grinned, opening his mouth, letting my thumb slide wetly from his lips. 

I slid the first two fingers of my hand over the glossy swollen redness of his lower lip and he sucked them in, cheeks hollowing out as he used the skills I'd been teaching him to perform a parody of fellatio on my fingers. It was painfully hot, to watch him from this angle, the sounds he made were thick and obscene. He writhed as he did it, brushing my stomach with the tip of his erection, whimpering around my hand with every touch of flesh to flesh, his mouth a blood hot paradise.

He refused to let go, when I tried to pull my hand back, his teeth digging in. I brought my hand up to his neck, pressing my thumb in at the join just below his jaw. Not enough to hurt, never enough for that, but he whined and let go, his eyes coming open once more. They were starting to lose focus. I took the tube from his powerless hands and flicked the cap open, squirting it over my spit slick fingers, coating my hand.

I urged his legs up, spreading him open for me, the long limbs bracketing my body as I moved, urging his hips up so I could get a pillow under them. He went along with it, his movements become less coordinated, sleepier, though his erection never flagged.

I ran the tip of one finger around the puckered rim of his entrance until it glistened wetly, twitching open and closed with each touch. Hungry. I pressed the tip of the tube to him and squeezed, squirting a bit inside of him, more slipping down between his cheeks, inviting. He took one finger easily, as though he'd been doing it his whole life. The second stretched him a little and he made a quiet sound, but we'd been here before too, and he adjusted quickly. 

I kept it there for a few minutes, slowly moving inside of him, his muscles gripping me tightly, trying to crush me at times before I worked him open, finally curling my fingers just right, brushing across his prostate, making him arch off the bed, a gasped “Please” falling from his swollen lips. It wouldn't be long before the drug took him completely under, his eyes were closed, his face going slack.

As I pressed for entrance with the third finger he whined, his fingers clumsily scrabbling against the sheets and I flashed back to the dreams I'd had of spreading him open with a toy, making him wear it all day until he was ready to explode, stretched wide for me. It sent the same possessive shudder up my spine, making my cock jerk as though with electrical current. Some day. But I would be the first one to take him, the only one. It had to be me, my flesh that knew him first, that he felt deep inside of him, claiming that last hidden place. 

He took me, eventually, the edges of him stretched and reddening as I moved inside of him, spreading him open and preparing him. I knew exactly when the drug took Harry under, his legs slumped, falling to the sides leaving him open and vulnerable. He slept as I moved faster, twisting my fingers and fanning them wide and then closed, pressing into him again and again, into that spot that made him jerk even as deep as the drug held him until he came in long, lazy streams, covering his thighs. I pulled my hand from him and wrapped it around myself, fingers still boiling hot from being inside of him as I jerked in a rough, quick pace until I came onto him, spattering onto his stomach and the flagging limpness of his cock, the feel of it small and soft and vulnerable a tangible thing even as my hand was wrapped around my own jetting hardness.

He slept through it, breathing slow and quiet as I climbed off the bed. Harry looked peacefully debauched, one hand flung up above his head, fingers curling softly, the other limp against his chest, riding the rise and fall of his breathing. Legs spread wide, hips propped up just a little, a quiet invitation to take him, to do more, pools and streamers of come drying on his soft skin.

Beautiful.

I left him there as I cleaned up and dressed, locking the bedroom door behind myself as I headed downstairs to meet Nate and a few of the boys. Nate looked at me, questioning as I stepped into the garage.

“How's he?”

“Asleep. It worked perfectly. I kept him distracted until the drugs kicked in, he'll never know what happened. Everything ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let's go.” I already wanted this to be over and done with so that I could come home and climb back into bed with Harry, wrap myself around his pliant form and have him there with me, safe.

I'd known enough to know how little I knew about magic when I acquired Harry. Just enough to get into trouble, as it were. But Harry loved to explain magic to anyone who would hold still long enough and I made a willing and eager pupil of myself. I would never be an expert, but I knew more than enough to understand how best to deal with a wizard who might prove to be uncooperative.

Warden Donald Morgan hung to his waist in the lake, suspended from a winch meant to help raise and lower small watercraft into Lake Michigan. The boathouse we stood in was small but enclosed on all sides, the center open to the lake and the proper owners in the Bahamas for another six months. In addition to the drugs I had had administered to him and the lake water that flowed around him and beneath him, cutting off his connection to his magic I had had water pumps set up so that they cycled more water out of the lake to run over him from above. I wanted to speak with him, and I doubted he would stay still for the entire conversation if I didn't take a few precautions.

“Good evening, Mr. Morgan.” I stepped out of the shadows and he brought his eyes around to me. He'd been taking the space in, trying to piece together what had happened. Always the sign of a good soldier, getting right down to the business of surviving when faced with a fucked up situation. I could almost admire the man if he hadn't been on the wrong side of things.

If he hadn't harmed Harry.

“Marcone. What is the meaning of this?” His voice was calm, controlled. As if his hands weren't painfully swollen and half frozen from the water, as though the cut above his eye from where he'd dropped to the pavement wasn't still dripping blood.

“I have a few questions for you. Since wizards are not well known for their forthrightness and honesty, I decided to take the easier path.” I smiled, and his eyes betrayed the flinch his body did not commit.

“The Council will not-” I swung my arm, the thin bamboo cane whistled through the air before striking him across the face. It left a bright red welt, painful but not permanently damaging.

“Your Council and I will have our own discussion soon enough. This is a private conversation between the two of us right now.”

“He's gotten to you. The warlock.” He narrowed his eyes, conviction filling his voice. “I warned you about him, about how they are. Slippery creatures. The black magic corrupts them from the inside. I know he looks pure, and sad, and he sounds so-” I hit him again, the other side of the face. This blow made a small cut.

“Do _not_ speak of Harry in that way. I know the truth. I've seen what happened to him. What you allowed to happen. Did you even ask him what had happened, or did you just hunt him down and declare him guilty?”

Morgan coughed and spat a mouthful of blood into the water.

“I came to a fellow Warden's home to find it fully engulfed, the stain of black magic everywhere and one of his apprentices screaming, ranting. He ran. He was guilty. If I had allowed him to speak he would have attempted to control me, or kill me as he did his family.”

“Or,” I said in my most reasonable tone, “you might have learned the truth. Harry killed them in self-defense. I told you, I've seen his memories. He loved them, even while Justin used him, he loved him. Harry never would have raised a hand to him if he'd had another choice.”

“You've seen- he's been inside your mind, Marcone. It's as I told you. He's been using his magic against you. Let us help you, Marcone. We'll take the warlock. I knew he should have been killed, too strong, too much like his mother. Once he's dead you'll be able to see how he was controlling you.”

Bile rose in my throat. Give Harry back to these people? Never. The idea that they would ever touch him again made me sick and angry. Morgan was as much a fanatic as I had thought. And he was who they used to hunt down children. How many had he killed outright, how many had he helped enslave, given over to cruel masters. I knew how he treated his own slave. How long had that woman belonged to him? Since she was Harry's age, or younger?

“Perhaps...” I let my voice sound slow, bewildered. As though something he said was getting through to me. “Can they remove the collar? Break the bond that way?”

“No. There is no way to remove a warlock's collar, once it's completed. The enchantment ends only with the death of the warlock.”

“But McCoy seemed to believe that he could free Harry.”

“McCoy would have said anything to get the boy back. He'd gone senile, the power he was given corrupting him. If he had some method that he believe would work, the knowledge died with him.”

“When you killed him.”

Morgan frowned, puzzled at this.

“We didn't kill him. The old man just died.”

Morgan appeared to believe what he was saying. That didn't mean someone else on the Council hadn't dealt with McCoy, but still. It was interesting.

“Thank you for your help, Mr. Morgan.” I gave him a quick nod and stepped closer, as if I were going to work the controls for the winch. “You've made things much more clear to me.” Nate stepped out of the darkness behind Morgan, his feet silent on the wood as he swung the bat at the back of the wizard's skull.

My friend was strong, and knew what he was doing. The bat hit with a thick, crunching wet sound. Similar, but thicker, meatier than when we had crushed pumpkins as children. He swung again, quickly, to be certain. Morgan's body jerked and spasmed, but they were the uncoordinated spastic movements of nerves and muscles firing without the control of the mind behind them.

Morgan continued to breathe, blood and thicker things leaking down his back from the ruin of his skull, a river of blood coming from his nose and mouth. His eyes were blank, one pupil pinpoint small, the other huge, broken blood vessels within painting his eyes red. I took a knife from the wall, an old scaling knife by the looks of it and knelt, leaning over the water. I took hold of the top of his head and pulled, raising his face and baring his throat. The owner took good care of his equipment. The serrated blade was keen and it opened his throat easily.

He kept trying to breathe for another minute or so, but it was all sound and fury. Morgan had been dead since the first blow, it just took a little longer for his body to catch up to the fact. Once he was still I dipped the knife in the water, letting the current wash most of the blood from it before I started cleaning it properly.

“Let's get him to the boat and get this done with.” I replaced the blade and surveyed the boathouse. It had been very neatly done. A little precautionary cleaning, the removal of my hoses and pumps and it would be as though we'd never been there at all. “You want to drive or fillet?” Nate tugged on the chain that opened the doors at the end of the boathouse, revealing the small fishing vessel we'd borrowed for the evening. It's owner was also out of town, in Canada visiting relatives.

“Drive. I had to do all the heavy lifting the last time we dumped some asshole. It's your turn.”

“As you like.” We pulled on heavy gloves and got to work.

Harry hadn't moved in the hours since I'd left him. I threw my clothing in the hamper and took a second, quick shower. He stirred a little as the bed dipped beneath my weight, his body turning and seeking my warmth. I pulled the sheet up over us and pressed against him, front to front, sliding my leg between his. He was still sticky from earlier and it wasn't a pleasant sensation against my wet skin, but it was a necessary bit of discomfort.

I pulled him in tight and bit at his throat, making a small mark there. He sighed and wrapped one long, sleep warm arm across my shoulders. I let myself fall asleep there, the sounds of his breathing, his heart beat steady in my ears.


	10. Chapter 10

-10-

Representatives of the Council did come by eventually though it took them nearly three weeks to do so. I'd been anticipating a swifter response – it was why I had left the further details of my plan to be carried out much later, to allow for a sufficient amount of time between Morgan's disappearance and everything that was to follow.

It wasn't Warden Luccio this time, but rather a pair of younger Wardens, Warden Frost and Warden Cassidy. Old enough by human standards, likely close to a hundred and fifty years each. It made them middle aged as wizards, and barely that. As they paced about the perimeter of Harry's wards, examining them I found myself wondering, quite out of nowhere whether or not wizards suffered from mid life crises, and if they did, what form did that take? The purchase of a vehicle built after the 1940's? Did they leave their mates for someone who was under a century old? And if the last, how many annoying and painful curses did the jilted lover throw at them, on average?

Finally, I judged that I'd exhibited a normal amount of patience.

“May I ask what this is all about, wardens? You've examined every inch of my property and I've kept Harry out of the way as you requested. I'd like to continue what little is left of my day, if it's not too much of an inconvenience to you.”

“We're investigating some deaths. A few disappearances. Wardens are checking the status of every known warlock, to make certain that none of them are involved.”

I looked mildly concerned. 'Some' and 'a few'. I knew of one disappearance, one death. 

“Do you suspect that one of the warlocks has gotten free? I was informed that that was impossible.”

“It is, it is.” Warden Frost hastened to reassure me. “But it's protocol in any case. No warlock has ever gotten free of the collar or been able to work around it.” She ran her hand through the air over one last section of warding and then nodded, satisfied. “The wards are good work. We'll need to see the warlock before we go. Just protocol, as I said.”

“As you like.” I led them upstairs to Harry's room. He was seated on his bed, a history textbook in his lap, scribbling notes. He'd been doing that more and more often, trying to either shove reminders that he wanted to go to college in my face or trying to show that he would work hard at it. In either case it was unnecessary. I wasn't bound to forget his desire and I knew how hard Harry worked at everything.

He set the work aside as we entered, sliding so that he was seated at the edge of the bed. Harry was a good foot taller than either of the Wardens, were he to stand, and he understood a little of how that made some people nervous.

“Harry, the Wardens would like to speak with you.”

“Sure. What-”

“We don't require the warlock speak, Mr. Marcone. We just need to examine the collar.” Cassidy stepped around me and a tingle of energy followed him. He reached for the collar and as his fingers touched it Harry grew stiff, but he kept quiet and still. The examination was over quickly enough, the Wardens conferring with one another quietly as we left the room. Harry watched us leave, curiosity heavy on his face.

“His collar is working, I take it?”

“Perfectly. We appreciate your cooperation.”

“Always happy to help.” I walked them toward the door. “May I ask, you said that there were several people who had gone missing or died. Who- that is, I know several people on the Council, loosely, thanks to my acquisition of Harry. I'm just hoping that it's no one I know personally.”

“A few of the senior level Wardens, sir. Some older members of the Council. I'm sure that it's nothing you need to be worried about.”

“Let us hope so.”

I had my contacts keep their ears out, quietly gathering information.

The Council was being killed off. It started quietly, with Warden Morgan's death. Oh, officially he was merely missing, but his warlock had collapsed and died, an event taken as a sure sign that Morgan himself was no longer among the living. She'd been with him too long to survive the psychic backlash. The carnage was quick and focused. Whoever was hitting the Council had very specific targets in mind. The 'old guard', if the information that I was given was correct. Or rather, certain parts of the old guard.

Many of them had been on my list as well. Others had not been. I let the unknown hunters' kills help cover my own. It became almost something of a game, who would get to a target first. The unknown killer or my hired assassins. An odd game, given that neither player was interested or willing to talk to the other, but I did keep score. 

He certainly had the more impressive body count, but that meant that his was the greater risk of discovery after all. I chose my targets and when they would be struck down with care. It slowed down my schedule, but the other killer's pace accelerated everything so much that I still felt rushed on occasion.

And I worked on discovering who might be doing the killing. I had suspicions, but little proof. After all, the Council had been around for millenia. They had more enemies than I had ever had, and they hadn't been as thorough in getting rid of them. A deadly oversight on their part.

I spent the long months as we played the game out with Harry, smoothing out some rough edges between us, and making inroads to the supernatural world. My movements were quiet, of necessity, but I offered support to certain factions within the Council. Comfort and aid. I maneuvered and waited, laying down certain markers, certain trails.

Langtry was the last hold out from the Senior Council. Strong and wily, he fought to hold together an increasingly frightened and fractured Council. It's membership and power were much diminished. Between us, my unknown friend and I whittled away at his power, his support. The Wardens, his police brutes, paid the heaviest toll. 

Two months before my anniversary with Harry, when he became mine, Langtry died. It was the last piece, the manner of his death settling any last doubts that I might have had. His death sent the Council into a frenzy, ducking and covering. I reassured my new friends, my allies, and I laid my bait.

A month and a half later I received a reply.

We met in an abandoned warehouse. I had bought it several years ago and kept it always about to go into renovation. It was always a good idea to have a conveniently empty building on call.

“You look older than I remember. Rough year? I must say, Langtry's death was...inspired. The traditional traitor's death, wasn't it?”

He snorted and thumped a sleek, unmarked black staff on the floor in front of him.

“Been busy. It takes somethin' out of a man. You look...insufferable.”

I took a slow step forward, into the light that shone through the open roof of the building.

“My life has been going rather smoothly, Mr. McCoy. Or should I call you Eb? I feel as though we should be on better terms than we are. After all, we share so much.” 

The old man bared his teeth at me in a mocking, angry grin.

“We share nothing. I came here because you've been lookin' for a way to remove the collar. Finally come to your senses, have you?” I put my hands behind my back and sighed. McCoy clucked his tongue at me and shook his head. “Hands where I can see 'em. Wouldn't want us to be having any misunderstandings, would we?”

“Certainly not. My apologies.” I brought my hands back out to my sides, palms up to show them empty. “Harry told me his story. How he came to be enslaved. I felt I owed it to him to explore any avenues of freedom.” McCoy made a low sound.

“Give him to me. I've figured out how to undo the binding enchantment without killing him. It'll break the bond with you. After that he'll be my responsibility again, like it should be.” I frowned, considering.

“The binding enchantment?” McCoy sighed.

“I don't have time to sit and teach you magic, boy. There's two collars, two enchantments. They lock together, merge. But the first enchantment, the one on the slave side of the collar is tied in to the warlock's life force. The second, on the master side of the collar is tied in to the master. I can break the bond between the two collars, then the bond between the master collar and you. Without killing you.”

“And then what?”

His face went dark.

“And then it ain't your problem anymore. Or you could keep pissing me off and I could blast you here and now and take Harry back over your smoldering corpse.”

I laughed, softly.

“If you could do that, you'd have done it when you tried to take him the first time. I know how that ends, and so do you. Either the feedback kills Harry outright, unlikely, I admit, given that we've only been tied together for a year, or it fries his brain. Neither option gives you what you want.” He grunted. “Can you remove both collars?”

“No.”

“You told Harry he'd be free. I saw you on the farm. You can control him with the collars without both being on him.” He sighed.

“Look, Marcone. This is none of your business. The Council should never have brought a mortal in on this in the first place. Harry belongs with me and that's that. You want to do this the hard way, we can do that.” Magic sparked through the air, building.

“No, I don't. One last question.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “I just want what's best for Harry, please. Did you ever ask Harry what happened? What really happened that night with Justin and the fire?”

“Oh, aye. Thought it only fair to get his side.”

“And it made no difference? The fact that he was innocent, I mean.” McCoy's face darkened, grew harder.

“He'd convinced himself of it, yes. Convinced you too, looks like. But he's a warlock, Marcone. I saw the black magic on him. Once they start, they can't stop. It twists them. Every single time. He's safer this way.”

“You didn't believe him.”

McCoy started to speak, his voice an angry snarl. Something hissed through the air, invisible until it hit the shield that McCoy threw up. I had no idea what he had heard or seen that let him get the thing up in time. The bullet flattened against his shield, sending out brilliant white sparks of light. 

I dove for cover as McCoy threw more power into his shield. Bullets began to hiss through the air, slamming into his shield or the ground, throwing up shards of concrete.

“Marcone, you snake!”

“It's not me!” I moved through the open space, trying to get behind him, to take advantage of the shield. He kept one eye on me as he tried to track down the shooters position.

“Bull-”

Pain erupted in my leg and I stumbled, fell. There was another shooter, behind us. They'd waited until I broke cover. Damn. I looked down. My leg throbbed, burning where it wasn't starting to go numb, blood starting to stain the cloth of my jeans. McCoy glanced back, cussing.

He made a quick twirling gesture with his left hand and the next shot from our second gunman hit the newly expanded shield. McCoy had stretched it out into a dome, covering us both. He kept that hand raised, holding the shield against the continuing barrage of bullets.

“Who'd you bring to this party, Marcone? They dumb enough to hit their own boss, eh?”

“Do you really think I'd hire men dumb enough to hit me accidentally?” I struggled to my feet, swaying. I'd been shot before. It hurt just as much now as it had in the past. McCoy watched me, trying to decide whether or not I was lying. With his attention faltering from the shield, one of the next shots punched through. It grazed his upraised arm and he turned his back to me, putting his focus back on the shield.

I staggered up behind him, trying to keep as much weight as I could off of my leg, one hand slipped into my jacket, as though I were clutching at a second wound.

“They've got to run out of bullets some time.” As I spoke I took that last step and brought my hand out, driving it and the blade I held up. The point slid in at the base of his skull, no resistance at all for a bare second until it sank deeper, the lower edge catching the top of his spine. I thought I could hear a wet, popping crunch, like knuckles cracking. I drove the knife up as hard as I could until it was sunk nearly to the hilt in his neck, then I pulled hard, angling it a little differently, doing as much damage as I could on the way out.

The shield flickered out of existence as he fell forward, a pool of blood beginning to form beneath him. McCoy wasn't breathing, but I decided to take no chances. People are harder to kill than most would think. I slit his throat and stood watching until the blood stopped flowing.

My men made their way in just as I was kneeling to wipe the blade off on McCoy's shirt.

“You good, sir?”

“I'm fine. Good shot, Mr. Sanders.”

“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.” The older man, our best sniper, produced a small medical kit. “If you could sit down, sir, I'll get you patched up.”

Harry was lying on my bed, a textbook so new I could smell it open in front of him. He was highlighting, grinning around a pen.

“I take it your first class went well?” His eyes lit up as I walked into the room. Harry shoved his pen and highlighter into the book and closed it on them, sliding it under the bed and out of the way.

“It was great!” He jumped off the bed and practically tackled me. “Thank you!” I leaned into the embrace and inhaled, breathing him in.

“Not still upset that it's tutors for now and not regular classes?”

“Nooooo...” His hand slid around my back and he froze. When he pulled back he had my knife in hand. It gleamed, perfectly clean. “What's this?”

“A new knife I purchased. Do you like it?”

“It's weird looking. I've never seen one with three edges on the blade before.” I reached out and took it from him.

“They don't make them any longer. It's an old trench knife.” I took the knife and went to the wall safe. Once it was secured I turned to head to the bed.

“You're hurt.” Harry wrapped an arm around me, dropping so that he could get one shoulder under my arm to keep weight off my wounded leg.

“It's nothing. An accident.” He said nothing, just half-carried me over to the bed. I sat down, my leg throbbing gratefully with the easing of pressure on it as he tugged at my shirt, pulling it off over my head and then bending, kneeling to work my jeans off. I pushed up enough so he could get them down over my hips.

Harry bundled them all up and vanished into the bathroom. When he came back he was naked. I leaned back on the bed and watched him cross the room. He blushed, still, when he noticed me watching him. He climbed onto his side of the bed and leaned over to blow out the lamp there.

“Leave it.” Harry looked at me. “I'm going to fuck you, Harry. And I want to see it.” He went red, but he left the lamp, instead he reached into his nightstand and pulled out the slick, handing it to me. “You're ready, Harry.” He bit his lip and nodded. “Lay back.”

Harry rolled onto his back, all muscle and grace and I pushed myself up, crawling carefully over him, my leg paining me. I pushed through it, shifted Harry around until I had him where I wanted him, hips canted up at me, like a precious jewel being presented to me on a pillow, his legs fallen open, drawing me in.

“John, I-”

“Hush. Just let me do this.” He subsided as I opened the tube, coating my fingers. Harry was still so tight, in spite of what I'd done to him before, stretching him out with my fingers, trying to prepare him for me.

I took my time with him. It had to be perfect. I'd waited so long for this, until it was right, until we were both ready. Two fingers, careful, stretching him open. His cock twitched, filling out. I took my free hand and wrapped it around him, drawing him down so that I could suck the head in, mouthing it gently. While he was distracted I pushed in further, drove in with three fingers, spreading them wide inside of him. He moaned and humped up a little, my fingers in his ass pinning him down. Harry drove back down, taking me in deeper, clenching tight. I'd been right. He was ready for me. He was so needy, so desperate for more. I wanted to hear him beg.

“More. More, please, John, please. Fuck me, stars, please, just do it already!” I released his cock and laid my arm over his hips, holding him down, in place. So eager, but I had to take my time. I couldn't hurt him, not for this.

I took him with my hands, my mouth, drawing him up, higher and higher before I backed off, keeping him there but not letting him crest, not yet. I pinched and bit at him, his stomach, his thighs, my thumb pressing into the base of his dick when he got too close. I wanted to take him to that boneless, mindless place he'd fallen in to our first night together, all loose limbs, no resistance at all. 

In the end, I didn't have the patience for it. Not that night. I'd waited long enough. There was nothing between us now, no one to try and take him from me. Harry was mine, as he was meant to be from the beginning. All that was left was this one final moment of claiming. 

I slid my hand free of him and rose up onto my knees, shifting so that I was crouched over him, my slick hand working my cock even as I brushed up against his hole, sending a shiver and a moan rocking through him.

I'd stretched him as best I could, but still, when I began to press in, piercing that deliciously tight ring of muscle he made a small, whining scream, hands coming up to scramble at my shoulders. I tried to take it slow, to give him time to adjust to this, but it was too much, the rhythmic clench and relaxation drawing me deeper into him, smooth and fast until I was balls deep, fully engulfed. I braced myself over him and tried to breathe. Harry's breath hissed in and out, rapid, his eyes clenched tightly closed.

“It's okay, it's okay.” I ran my hands down his sides, soothing, took his flagging erection in hand and flicked my thumb under the head, a hint of nail in the touch. He whined and moved into it, hardening again as I twisted my hand around him, stroking quickly. He eventually began trying to move in tiny pulses, working himself on my dick.

I leaned forward and rested my head on his chest as I pulled almost entirely out and then slid back in, like it was gravity pulling me deeper. Harry groaned and kept moving. I lifted my head. His eyes were dark, his face flushed. I moved faster, harder as he loosened around me, growing hotter, slicker, my movements smoothing out, easy and natural as breathing.

I changed my angle and Harry shouted, fingers digging into the sheets so hard I could hear them tear. I was there, right at the edge. I just needed...I leaned forward and found one of Harry's nipples, salt sweat and sweet skin beneath my lips. I lapped at it, drawing it tight. I swirled my tongue around the peak one more time before I bit, drawing as much of his flesh into my mouth as I could, gnawing gently at it. Harry screamed, his hips jerking up, his sex pinned between us as he came.

The faint taste of blood hit my tongue as Harry clamped down around me, his passage milking me, pulling my spine out through my cock. I came, filling him, marking him indelibly.

The small ring of wizards stared at McCoy's body, fear and relief clear on their features. These six were the oldest, most powerful wizards left in the Council. Not a single one of them over a hundred. They were right to be afraid. Though McCoy was dead, he had left them vulnerable.

“We're very grateful, Mr. Marcone, for all your help. The men that you've sent have been invaluable. They already prevented one attack of Red Court vampires on a training center.”

“I'm glad that I could be of service, Wizard Bell. Now, if you'll excuse me.” I rose from my chair, leaning heavily on a cane. I didn't really need it, but it looked excellent and had drawn cries of sympathy.

“Mr. Marcone, we actually had a request.”

“If it's something I can do...”

“We realize that you're not a wizard, but we would appreciate it if you could stay on as an...advisor of sorts. None of us have any experience in running any sort of organization. It would be a temporary measure, of course.” I looked at their faces. I'd killed the boogey man and I'd already provided assistance that had kept some of the survivors alive. I made certain that my face was set in reluctant lines.

“I don't feel as though I have the right to interfere with this. You've been devastated, and I think you need to pull together to come through this.”

“Please. We're only looking for advice. We don't want to impose on you any more than we have to. But we're out of our depths here and we owe it to the rest of the Council to be sure that we do everything we can for them.” I bowed my head, accepting their reasoning. It also hid the quirk of my lips. I sat back down.

“Well. If you're certain?” They nodded. “Then I do have a few ideas.”


End file.
